True and I usually do that when time is an issue as long as the spread isn’t huge.
But is time really an issue to the person putting up 1000 things for sale .01 cheaper than a tiny order that’s just 10 or 50 items? A new player might really need that 10 COF where the guy buying 500 of them a shot is probably not going to benefit much, if at all, from those first 10 COF.
No. But why would a new player care about that? It’s the new player that can abuse this fact, because the big boy is not selling to bids, the bids are higher. So the new player gets his money instantly, and more of it because the bids are still there.
Yes they shouldn’t care about the (lack of) price difference either. I’m also saying it’s about the timing, as you said above, and the fact that it’s much easier to fill a small order than a large one.
Selling to bids may not be a great option if the spread is large. I was ranting on a somewhat specific situation (that nontheless still occurs pretty often in my experience).
I mean it’s not a huge deal either, just annoying.
I suppose I could boil the whole thing down to this.
Sell order (offer) placed at 110.00
A new sell order comes in at 109.99
I mean come on. I understand why people do it. But that’s not really a “better price”, it’s the same damn price effectively. You just cut in line ahead of the guy who was there first! I mean at least keep it to 3 sig figs difference or something. Now if it’s a tiny quantity it’s not as bad, but if it’s a large one, I think I’m going to have to consider that rude behavior. lol
It’s like stinking in public. Yeah it’s legal, sure it saves the stinker time never taking a bath. But don’t do it.
I agree with the OP. If you want to cut in line, you should have to post a significantly better price. For me, it’s the 1-2-5 rule. Prices from…
Steps are always 0.5% to 1% this way.
Everyone here is right, this has been a topic of discussion for a long time, including devlog #346 not too long ago where this was explicitly brought up.
tl;dr yes, we need dynamic tick-size adjustments on the markets.
I talk about it here, others have talked at length as well:
And here:
And here:
One advantage of the current system is that it allows those of us who self-impose a 3 sig fig tick size to feel morally superior to those who don’t.
Similarly, those who snipe by 0.01 must look at our spaced out orders and think “Why would anyone do that? I’m much smarter than these idiots.”
In short, everybody wins. 
You know I never thought of it that way lol.
Generally speaking as the game has aged, I personally just get lazier with the orders. The size I trade at is so big, someone frontrunning me with some small quantity just doesn’t matter. Generally speaking, other large traders seem to be of the same way. We’re not really micromanaging unless it’s that one really important thing.
Oh I thought I was the only one. It was getting awkward. 
And you would think that large/mid traders wouldn’t bother putting in the .99 to get ahead of these tiny orders (like I was railing about in the OP) … well, some do. lol
As stated before, I’m in the philosophical camp of having as few structural limitations as possible: just allow 0.01 price increments. If “the markets” don’t like that, there is nothing stopping players from posting orders with larger increments. Why do you want to force increments? It feels like regulatory capture 
Allowing 0.01 increments also side-steps the endless debates of, if you you are going to do some sort of larger increment, what should it be?
In general: Keep It Simple, Seriously!
The goal here is to make a pleasant gaming experience for players, not to fulfil some kind of ideological principle. If the majority of players would be happier with specific tick sizes, then that’s the only justification they need.
Whether or not it’s a wise use of developer time to implement them is a different question. I’m inclined to suspect that adding new features would be more valuable.
I watched a GDC while ago, About adding mechanics to make player happier, something they will have hidden effects that can lower total enjoyably of the game, this might be the case.
adding a mechanic to artificial inflation to ticks size might make the market more unstable, if price keeps fluctuating then this might disencourage player using the market. And further in encourage play to play self sustainable.
I think if people flip the market more which will close the spread, then people who don’t want to deal with 0.01 can just sell to buy order and people who like.
Remember the “problem” I was railing on about here was mostly a convenience/annoyance thing.
If you bid for 5 BSE at a price 1400.00 and someone comes in and bids 1400.01 for 50 BSE - I mean, how are we supposed to feel about that? You didn’t offer a better price. You were just there later than the other guy and you’ve cut in line for essentially the same price. And worse, the amount you’re ordering is enough that it might seriously delay the first guy’s order from filling. That doesn’t feel at least slightly rude to anyone?
I, for one, choose to feel superficially morally superior by posting a slightly better order. lol
As for tick sizes and keeping the books from looking like something the cat threw up, I don’t see how reducing some of the ridiculous granuliarity the order books allow is limiting at all, because it’s not a meaningful restriction to the trader.
Whether it’s worth addressing tick sizes with dev time, I won’t judge that. Not every change is some big deal that will block more meaningful changes. There’s no pressing need to clear out old orders from the books - just prevent new ones which don’t meet some criteria. Heck it could even be a simple client side UI enforced tick size (I realize it would be haxxable to get around it if someone was really determined, but who cares about such edge cases). If we never ask for small fixes because “there might be more important things”, lots of small quality of life problems will never get fixed, even if they’re easy.
At least post at the same price (1400) so that the first order fills first, was my original point. Which is not really a point because this was just a rant. Okay, fine, I’ll show myself out now. 
It is not the responsibility of another other party to be “nice” to your orders. It is a market, not a gentlemen’s club. The best price wins.
If you don’t want someone to offer below or “cut” you, set your price low enough that no one in the market wants to offer, then you’ll get filled almost immediately. You don’t need extra rules.
There is already a dearth of active players, Making more rules because you think it’s “rude” would just stifle the market. Especially with a small player count currently.
When a lot of players are asking for something, you have to be pretty sure of your position in order to say “If we implemented this, you wouldn’t like the results, so we’re not going to do it for your own good.”
Given how many players have expressed that they would like this change, and the number of different arguments in favour of it, I don’t think you can be this confident.
If you are talking simple game mechanics, yes I would agree with you but… here we are talking about a real market with simulated goods.
Yes as a whole it is a game, but if you strip away the space theme and simulated goods (DW, BHP, RAT) and replaced with actual stocks, commodities, foreign exchange that had real world value, the market portion of PRUN would still work because it is a means to facilitate exchange.
Having a majority opinion does not make that opinion correct.
Not everyone is being rude because they post an offer or bid .01 above/below yours.
Lets say a player has a large volume order to place on the market (let’s say PE!) but has tight profit margins because of currently expensive inputs to make the PE. They calc an acceptable profit and place that order which is .01 below a smaller order. They are not being rude, they just want their returns to stay in the green.
Now, you if make a rule that forces a player to place an order at a price THEY DO NOT WANT TO PLACE, that order entry rule could potentially force them to make a loss on that trade, which is NOT FUN.
If TIME is more valuable to you, place your order closer to the bid/REQUESTS or sell it on the bid/REQUESTS. If the return on investment is more valuable to you, place it on the OFFERS stack at the price you desire and vice versa. Of course your price must be reasonable.
In a market with real goods, the bid/ask spread (current best prices) changes all the time, and it’s not because the participants are “being rude” haha.
Well hold on a second, I didn’t propose any new rules to address this “rudeness” rant thing, at least not initially. I agree “politeness” is not a thing in trade; the OP should be read as a bit tongue-in-cheek. But gaming the system is a valid problem (admittedly not a huge one). It just so happens that using price ticks would probably address this issue.
So what if the price granularity went down to .00000000001? 1500.00000000001 is technically a “better” price than 1500 too but it’s obviously ridiculous. Heck I’d be inclined to take the 1500 offer instead if I could… lol. Why does it need to be .01 and nothing else, for all markets no matter what the price?
The argument I would put forth is that this is an arbitrary amount of granularity. This works fine in a few markets, but poorly in most markets. A buy offer of 1500.01 is not meaningfully “better” than 1500.00, I still think this is tantamount to “cutting in line” and gaming the design of the system.
When the market is PE, you’re correct. It needs the .01 obviously. And I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise there. But this argument misses the target, and it weakens quickly in most other higher priced markets.
I really doubt that the situation above is what’s taking place in the vast majority of cases, too. Most of the time it’s the line-cutting/gamey behavior, at least in the low-end markets. You can tell because these .01 “better” offers will be placed by the same companies at drastically different prices within a short period. It’s clearly not based on some detailed calculation.
Another way you can tell is sometimes you’ll see 500.02 or 500.03 placed clearly to cut in front of an existing .01 or .02 order. Surely we’re not going to argue that people posting at those prices did some grand calculation and they’re only profitable at that particular price? (Anyway there’s nothing stopping them from putting their order 2nd or 3rd in the order book at a price like 501 to stay in green.)
Any penny war between individuals is simply because you want to be front in line and get your order filled first. Being first has value, otherwise people wouldn’t spend time doing it.
This is why I think there should be enforced granularity. You want to be first? You must sacrifice something meaningful. This is why PE and SF are the two healthiest markets in the game.
i suppose one could just use an LM …
I think it would be neat and simple to have 3 sell buttons:
SELL NOW (into the highest offer)
SELL NEXT (cut in line and offer 1 tick lower then lowest sell)
SELL IN LINE (same price as lowest sell)
well and custom sale for entering the exact price as before, for those who want to fiddle with it.
analogue for BUY.