fishy CLD dealings on auction

Dont know if anyone noticed the CLD trades on auction.
There's actually 1 person who dominates the 99% of all CLD trades on auction.
I wont mention any names but it's easy to see who I'm talking about.
I also have the feeling he's using some alt accounts for his trades.

He owns all the orders and all the offers.

A few deals which are about to end drew my special attention.

1 guy bids 4000 on 2 deeds (from an avatar which could very well be an alt). The person in question raised that offer to 4001. Then 30 minutes later raises his own bid to 4040 (2020 per deed).
Another example is even more extreme.
1 Deed he offered 223 ped but 20 minutes later raises his own offer also to 2020.

Why would he do that?
He didnt do that because he's eager to acquire those deeds since he's selling 2 pages full of them.
He also didnt do that because he's afraid of missing the end time for offer since he seems to be online 24 hours per day.
Imo the only reason he overbid his own bid is to force people to pay more than that 2020 ped and forcing people to buy his offered deeds.

This person acts like a stock broker making money from the spreads between offers and orders making normal CLD trading completely impossible for any outsider.
Any offer will automatically be underbid within minutes and every order will automatically overbid within minutes.

He does not limit himself to deeds, but many other items as well, totally screwing over the order/offer system on the auction.



Now, am I just being paranoid or is just just fishy?

So he is buying and selling using the game systems.
I don't have problem with normal CLD trading as an outsider. I login click BO and it's over in a sec.
You are paranoid sir, except for that alien probing you think was a dream.

You cannot expect ingame auction to have same checks as London Stockexchange. If money is the unique aspect of this game, there is bound to be greed and all its effects, which, to some extent, are good for the game. You can also see two persons cornering a couple of times per week the iron ingot market. I don't mind, I just play ball and try to pick my moments. I enjoy and to some extent condone these things. As long as is not scamming, is fair game. IRL I am rather center-oriented politically, but EU is a damn good place to be a capitalist and follow the profit

AxeMurderer said:

So he is buying and selling using the game systems.
I don't have problem with normal CLD trading as an outsider. I login click BO and it's over in a sec.
You are paranoid sir, except for that alien probing you think was a dream.

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lol

yep I'm just imagining the 2 pages of offers from that dude.
I'm also imagining the offers he made.

Yup he's using the game systems indeed.
And I'm saying he's totally dominating the CLD trades.

nothing to do with tin foil hats

At least they still use the in-game auction. Was about to run to the bank(thanks to an intentionally low limit) to do a wire transfer for one of the rarer items ingame on the auction....but it was pulled from the auction early Monday morning (3 days left) before I could get there and I was told to put better real CASH offers in instead of PED.

Mindark doesn't care....last time I consider a bank transfer ever for sure, there just is no point if people unload stuff faster without penalty on Paypal. I cant even get to the bank fast enough to compete for the ingame items ingame anymore. The other sellers of the same rare item probably would have gotten my PEDS instead, now they wait even longer for someone else to deposit big chunks and bid on their behalf, cause it wont be me anymore.

And what is ingame, is often very manipulated like the CLDs, freely with no system put in place to prevent it.

I always thought they should do IP checks for auctions though...probably way to technical for MA and not worth their time. The sheer amount of alts they allow to list known crafted items from single players shows they don't care.

Sadly, I am sure plenty of players have been left with that fishy dealings feeling and just never logged back in.

The whole thing feels kinda fishy when Paypal dominates player transfers.

market manipulation? he tries to push up the price of all clds, if he bought lots of them at lower value he can really turn a profit =)


i see no reason for him to do this except profiting. it's not like the auction is "fun" and something you want to pay for lol

LangeTobias said:

market manipulation? he tries to push up the price of all clds, if he bought lots of them at lower value he can really turn a profit =)


i see no reason for him to do this except profiting. it's not like the auction is "fun" and something you want to pay for lol

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well, at the moment he's not pushing the price up, but more pulling it further down.
I've started to undercut his prices to see how low he goes.

He even retracted his +2020 orders now since the offers are now already as low as 2035.

I dont think he cares about the CLD price. He just makes his profit out the spreads.
He normally offers around 30 ped above his orders.
In that 30 ped margin he trades.
I think he makes around 20~30 ped per sale minus the auction fees.

He makes sure he always has the highest order. So all people dumping CLD's dump to him.
On the other side he always makes sure he's got the lowest offer so all people buying have to buy from him.

And as long as there is a spread between offer / order he makes ped.
regardless of the CLD price.

*edit*

and he's doing the same tricks with the imp ares rings.
But there he makes much more since the spread is much higher!
His highest order is +522 and he offers at +578.

So if you dump your ring, he buys at +522. And if you want to buy one you pay him +578.

buy for +523 and sell for +577.

lol, and now the other fish entered the pond again, dropping the CLD price even more, undercutting my offers. And he in turn got undercut by our main man.

This morning you could sell 22 deeds for +2020 on orders.
Lowest offered was +2053.

Now after playing with them a little the order price dropped to 1991 and the offered price dropped to + 2029 just in 1 morning.

So if you want to buy some deeds, wait a little. with this pace We will rush the price down to +1800.
Hahaha, this market is so damn easily manipulated.

I just wonder how the hell it is possible to be overbid with an order on certain items at any given time of the day within 3 minutes. Wether is be 6 am, 13 pm, 22 pm or 1am. There are some shady things going on thats for sure

Trifle said:

I just wonder how the hell it is possible to be overbid with an order on certain items at any given time of the day within 3 minutes. Wether is be 6 am, 13 pm, 22 pm or 1am. There are some shady things going on thats for sure

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nah according to axemurderer your just paranoid

Btw none of those auction traders can be found in the player register.
So they dont want to be found.


lol @Haruto Rat, dont you get tired by constantly having to un-ignore me to read the posts?

wizz said:

...

A few deals which are about to end drew my special attention.

1 guy bids 4000 on 2 deeds (from an avatar which could very well be an alt). The person in question raised that offer to 4001. Then 30 minutes later raises his own bid to 4040 (2020 per deed).
Another example is even more extreme.
1 Deed he offered 223 ped but 20 minutes later raises his own offer also to 2020.

Why would he do that?....?

Click to expand...

this was a bit noobish of me.

This is of course very easy to explain.

As he had orders placed at +2020 it automatically bids up to +2020.

Right?

(I dont do orders a lot, so I'm not 100% sure)

wizz said:

this was a bit noobish of me.

This is of course very easy to explain.

As he had orders placed at +2020 it automatically bids up to +2020.

Right?

(I dont do orders a lot, so I'm not 100% sure)

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Not in this case I think, as the bid/order times were out by quite a bit, but maybe he bid specially at +2020 before placing a new order a couple of hours later so that the order wouldn't get 'gunged up' with the individual bid and would stay open for the full number ordered.

wizz said:

I dont think he cares about the CLD price. He just makes his profit out the spreads.

And as long as there is a spread between offer / order he makes ped.
regardless of the CLD price.

Click to expand...

I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing this. It's called 'arbitrage', and a great way to make guaranteed profit. If I had the PED bankroll, I would do the same thing. The market is a free market, so nobody is forced to sell or buy unless they want to.

rtos00 said:

I don't think there's anything wrong with him doing this. It's called 'arbitrage', and a great way to make guaranteed profit. If I had the PED bankroll, I would do the same thing. The market is a free market, so nobody is forced to sell or buy unless they want to.

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yes, you're absolutely right here.

but, I think it's fishy and I don't like it.

Isnt there something in the UELA about ruining others fun to play?

Conspiracy Theories!!

This is more than the odd conspiracy theory, auction manipulation is against the rules, and if reported, will be investigated. Its not fair if someone has the time and resources to screw up the auction. This person will get caught out. Anyone rememeber Wirlo?

I would say it’s artificial price fixing. CLDs are hugely overvalued for what they offer. If you own a lot of them a crash in value would be a disaster. I still don’t understand why ComPet deeds still have value, they have no purpose?

beside bragging, can you be the hero, just playing a game hehe

It sounds fishy to me as well, however one of those i can understand A reason for doing it:

wizz said:

1 Deed he offered 223 ped but 20 minutes later raises his own offer also to 2020.
Why would he do that?

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Knowing that deeds go for a lot higher than 223ped, you would know that eventually you would get outbid on it...usually it will happen in the last 10 minutes too (those damn snipers). So if you look at when the auction end time is and know that you will not be around...like 3am in the morning when you have work the next day...or you will be away from your house at work or on vacation, or stuck in traffic from picking kids up at school, etc, etc.
Knowing this, even if its days away, is enough reason to bid the highest amount you will pay for the deed.
That way, if you win you will be happy with what you paid for it, and if someone bids higher then that's tough luck and you wont get it.

Now i would be concerned if he raised it above what a deed should cost, say if he bid 2200 ped on a deed when the average rate is 2050 ped ....that would signal he is trying to inflate the value. However 2020 ped for one deed is cheaper than normal, so you would assume it will be outbid....if not he gets a good deal and its the rest of us who lost out for not bidding.

The other thing to remember is just because he has orders in place, doesn't mean people are dumping to him at those prices...usually all the orders i have seen are lower than what you would be able to get by putting on auction with a buyout at average mu. If people are dumping to him, well that is their own fault for wanting ped straight away instead of giving the auction a good chance.

If you don't like what he is doing, then either report him to MA and let them investigate, or put higher orders than he does which eventually will lead to you owning all the CLD's as if you keep increasing then eventually it will lead to buyout on all current auctions.....provided you have the funds.

Otherwise, all you are doing is complaining and that doesn't help anyone.

Darth Revan said:

It sounds fishy to me as well, however one of those i can understand A reason for doing it:



Knowing that deeds go for a lot higher than 223ped, you would know that eventually you would get outbid on it...usually it will happen in the last 10 minutes too (those damn snipers). So if you look at when the auction end time is and know that you will not be around...like 3am in the morning when you have work the next day...or you will be away from your house at work or on vacation, or stuck in traffic from picking kids up at school, etc, etc.
Knowing this, even if its days away, is enough reason to bid the highest amount you will pay for the deed.
That way, if you win you will be happy with what you paid for it, and if someone bids higher then that's tough luck and you wont get it.

Click to expand...

He seems to be online 24/7 or close it.
For normal people this explanation would be valid, but not for this greatest trade person.
Also, as I wrote before, it's not like he really wants the items, because he's got 2 pages full of offers and thus selling it. If you REALLY want something, why have two pages of offers?

Darth Revan said:

The other thing to remember is just because he has orders in place, doesn't mean people are dumping to him at those prices...usually all the orders i have seen are lower than what you would be able to get by putting on auction with a buyout at average mu. If people are dumping to him, well that is their own fault for wanting ped straight away instead of giving the auction a good chance.

Click to expand...

Now this is were you go wrong again.
I've been monitoring the CLD trade very closely and people do dump at him! All the low price on the auction graph are his order prices. And all high sells are nearly all from his offers.

And that's because people dont have much choice. Since the greatest trade person ALWAYS has the highest order as he instantly increases any other bid by 0,01 ped, making his order go on top....ALWAYS.
So every CLD sold to an order will be to him.

If you dont want to sell to an order and place an offer, he will automatically place an offer under yours, constantly undercutting your price. Making it nearly impossible to sell through offers.


Now I would call this harassment for sure. His only reason/motive is to make money. And that by pissing on other players, constantly.


It's bit like being harassed while hunting. When a guy constantly steals your mob, making it impossible for you to hunt. But he does that on the auction.

Darth Revan said:

If you don't like what he is doing, then either report him to MA and let them investigate,

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I might even do that.

Darth Revan said:

or put higher orders than he does which eventually will lead to you owning all the CLD's as if you keep increasing then eventually it will lead to buyout on all current auctions.....provided you have the funds.

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Sadly I dont have the bankroll to fight him on his own terms.

Darth Revan said:

Otherwise, all you are doing is complaining and that doesn't help anyone.

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Well, I finally wanted to bring this into the open.
If you see it as complaining, just stop reading.

here, as you can see, it's impossible to have the lowest offer.
No matter how low I will place, he will place 1 ped lower.
And as soon as his (lowest) deed sells, he immediately places a new one.
Making dealing nearly impossible.


Isn't that a violation of:

Entropia Universe Account Terms of Use (ToU)

8. MindArk’s Rules of Conduct
...
c. You cannot interfere with any other Participants ability to use and enjoy the Entropia Universe.
...


There another poor guy trying to sell his deeds through offer.
I followed his offers and he had to keep lowering his prices due to this trade guy constantly undercutting him. He must have had loads of wasted auction fees already due to this ass.

maybe its an auction bot

Me Really Never said:

maybe its an auction bot

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Don't think he's a bot because his over/underbids are not on set times. Usually within half an hour but mostly within mere minutes.
So he's probably constantly online browsing the auction.
His avatar seems to be created purely for this task
His name fits the job and he never globalled on anything.

He seems so have made it his job.

wizz said:

here, as you can see, it's impossible to have the lowest offer.
No matter how low I will place, he will place 1 ped lower.
And as soon as his (lowest) deed sells, he immediately places a new one.
Making dealing nearly impossible.


Isn't that a violation of:

Entropia Universe Account Terms of Use (ToU)

8. MindArk’s Rules of Conduct
...
c. You cannot interfere with any other Participants ability to use and enjoy the Entropia Universe.
...


There another poor guy trying to sell his deeds through offer.
I followed his offers and he had to keep lowering his prices due to this trade guy constantly undercutting him. He must have had loads of wasted auction fees already due to this ass.

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Hello,
you could write several pages about this topic,i will keep it in short

1., no its very legal to do it, its called free market, and it would/can/does happen also with other things (e.g. pyrite,aud,putty .. etc)

2., you have to see a bigger picture of it, some guys do live in countries where like 400 bucks is a monthly wage, therefore those try to better that up ...

3.,if you want to buy a cld for your OWN purpose only, its very easy to get ones or sell them , just be out of his/her range , since everybody pays the price he/she wants...if i really want one , i pay 5 ped more for example

same goes for selling, your auc example does happen with all other things too,some ppl want to be on first order for sell,so they undercut all-->SOLUTION: just be cheaper for a buch like 10 ped->bam,sold , or use trade channels

4.,you can thank ma for the "NEW" auction system with AUTOMATIC bidding, now its like 1k% easier to do those things

Eddie

Edward-James said:

Hello,
you could write several pages about this topic,i will keep it in short

1., no its very legal to do it, its called free market, and it would/can/does happen also with other things (e.g. pyrite,aud,putty .. etc)

2., you have to see a bigger picture of it, some guys do live in countries where like 400 bucks is a monthly wage, therefore those try to better that up ...

3.,if you want to buy a cld for your OWN purpose only, its very easy to get ones or sell them , just be out of his/her range , since everybody pays the price he/she wants...if i really want one , i pay 5 ped more for example

same goes for selling, your auc example does happen with all other things too,some ppl want to be on first order for sell,so they undercut all-->SOLUTION: just be cheaper for a buch like 10 ped->bam,sold , or use trade channels

4.,you can thank ma for the "NEW" auction system with AUTOMATIC bidding, now its like 1k% easier to do those things

Eddie

Click to expand...

Ok eddie, tell me were you hunt. Lets see if I can make your hunt unbareble.
It s free world right, so I can stand where I want, right?
Now, what if I would constantly keep standing in front of your avatar while you were hunting. Would you appreciate that?
Or would it ruin your way to play?

Well, that's exactly what he does, constantly keep standing in your face (on auction), ruining others ability to use the auction normally.

what if its a MA controlled avatar to inflate the prices? because now where most plots are used up and the returns of clds go down and down and down there is no way why a cld should be worth 2k at all. 1.5k should be its top value at those payout. maybe even less

Me Really Never said:

what if its a MA controlled avatar to inflate the prices? because now where most plots are used up and the returns of clds go down and down and down there is no way why a cld should be worth 2k at all. 1.5k should be its top value at those payout. maybe even less

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No, I dont thinks it's in MA interest to keep CLD prices up.

Besides he's not so much keep the prices high since he's always undercutting everybody driving the prices down.
Like I said earlier, CLD prices dont matter for him as he trades in the margin (the spread between order and offer).
If CLD price drop he drops his order and offers.
If CLD price goes up he increases his orders and offers.

So, no, I dont think he's MA but sooner just a guy who made it his job to trade items.
And like I said before, it's not just CLD's he's trading in.
Look at the imp ares orders/offers. Happens the same there.

wizz said:

No, I dont thinks it's in MA interest to keep CLD prices up.

Besides he's not so much keep the prices high since he's always undercutting everybody driving the prices down.
Like I said earlier, CLD prices dont matter for him as he trades in the margin (the spread between order and offer).
If CLD price drop he drops his order and offers.
If CLD price goes up he increases his orders and offers.

So, no, I dont think he's MA but sooner just a guy who made it his job to trade items.
And like I said before, it's not just CLD's he's trading in.
Look at the imp ares orders/offers. Happens the same there.

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yes,. seems also that others of these deeds traders has stop this or then this is alt controls some of them also.

edit: talking about guys who controlled deed market year ago... there was 3-6 people and now... its just him..

wizz said:

Ok eddie, tell me were you hunt. Lets see if I can make your hunt unbareble.
It s free world right, so I can stand where I want, right?
Now, what if I would constantly keep standing in front of your avatar while you were hunting. Would you appreciate that?
Or would it ruin your way to play?

Well, that's exactly what he does, constantly keep standing in your face (on auction), ruining others ability to use the auction normally.

Click to expand...

Incorrect example, you know it. First of all, you are allowed do the same trades and try to up some peds. Its not manipulation while bids are around market value. And as Edward-James said, you always can buy or sell CLD just add or cut 5 peds, use traide channels, this forum etc. Also resellers keep CLDs price hight and stable - its good for MA and CLDs owners.

Zayka said:

Incorrect example, you know it. First of all, you are allowed do the same trades and try to up some peds. Its not manipulation while bids are around market value. And as Edward-James said, you always can buy or sell CLD just add or cut 5 peds, use traide channels, this forum etc. Also resellers keep CLDs price hight and stable - its good for MA and CLDs owners.

Click to expand...

It the perfect example of making it impossible for other to do normal business!
Same as I stand in front of your face when hunting.

Using alternative trade channels is possible the same as I can say to you can hunt somewhere else but not in this spot!
And besides, why should I be FORCED to use other trade channels?

Thats simply against rule 8 in the EULA.

I have nothing against resellers, but this guy just takes in to extreme and totally claims all CLD sales at the auction.

This one guy forces the entire playerbase to work around his way of dealing on auction.
How can that be correct?