Pages: [1] 2 :: one page |
|
Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Estrixx
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 18:11:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Estrixx on 29/01/2008 18:11:15 I'm currently doing a graduate thesis in game theory and I became interested in coordination games in virtual worlds. Right now I'm looking into EVE as I recently learned that EVE contains two major trading hubs as noted in the topic. I was hoping some of you could provide a first-pass explanation as to why you believe these two locations became trading hubs. Also, were they always that way? Responses aren't going to be used in any way, I just wanted to "test the waters" and glean some general information. Following the work in Castronova, I wanted to extend the inquiry to EVE, which seems a good test-bed for game-theoretic explanations. Thanks for your help.
This may have been asked before, but for the sake of validity, I wanted more current reponses.
|
LaVista Vista
Conservative Shenanigans Party
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 18:15:00 -
[2]
Rens is slowly starting to die as a tradehub.
But i can tell you about Jita.
Jita is a very central location for one. So it was an obvious place.
But the thing that really made it a tradehub, was that the original T2 bpo holders started selling there, when T2 bpo's came out.
So it was the main place to get T2 stuff, and thus everything evolved around it.
|
Brisco Smiley
Peppermint Bay Trading Company
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 18:49:00 -
[3]
Estrixx, if you have not already done so, I suggest poking around all the links in the sticky threads. There is a tremendous wealth of information available (eve-central historical market dumps for example). Be aware that it is not always clearly cataloged and marked as important. Though people enjoy sharing what they learn from experience, this is a game in which the informed prey upon the uninformed. The very most precious resources provide raw information with the restriction that you must figure out how to use it. As game theory, the most effective rule sets are closely guarded secrets. I suggest playing through the trial period to gain some basis for understanding the material available here.
CCP has an economist on staff. With academic credentials, you could probably get hard statistics from their databases.
Also, there was an ISD write-up on trade hubs recently:
The first trading system we will be talking about is without a doubt the most famous: Jita. Specifically the Planet 4, Moon 4 Caldari Navy Assembly Plant, or ęJita 4-4Ę as it is commonly known. This station, located within The Forge, has the most goods moved through it in all of New Eden, with billions of ISK changing hands daily. This station has a rich history, once being home to a great number of Caldari Navy mission agents. However, most of these agents have since moved to stations in surrounding systems as to avoid, amongst other things, the increasing overhead cost of living in Jita 4-4. In fact, Jita 4-4 has become so popular with traders that in the past, routes have been redirected around the system in order to lessen the strain on the stargates.
Send us a link when you publish.
Cheers,
Brisco Smiley
|
K'dararle
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 19:02:00 -
[4]
Yulai was the original trade hub until ccp surrounded it by low sec in an attenpt to disperse trade. The 3 main trade regions are forge citadel and lonetrek because caldari are the most played race and these are the caldari regions. Jita is the most central place to these 3 regions
|
Quilan Mesura
Pangalactic United Trading
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 19:02:00 -
[5]
i do remember the prime trade-hub before jita was yulai, although not as massive ofc - it was a time when 100ppl in a system were many.
i also remember a patch when ccp rearranged the "hi-ways" and also added more 0.0 entries, and i'm quite sure this was a deciding factor too in the rise of jita and total decline of yulai.
dunno much about the history of rens - but also geographically a central spot in the east/south-east.
i think as soon as a certain critical point was reached the constant rise of numbers in jita became unstoppable and maybe is at the current limit because of hardware-issues (lag). nonetheless i can imagine that markets will spread out more and more from this point, mainly because of the rise of total players online, which means more "stuff" available on the market.
now this makes me seriously think about if there is an absolute need of a central trade hub and in fact i don't think so - in correlation to the amount of players online.
so let's examine the main features of a trade-hub: 1. availabilty 2. price 3. location
a hub is attractive if you know when you travel there you can get everything you want from a buyers's pov and there are customers for the sellers on the other hand.
a competitive/low price will be important although mainly interesting for buyers.
on the third position comes the location.
CREATE A HUB: meet all three requirements and you are fine. kinda. BUT this ebil other trade-hub has still a lot of traffic grrr. well, let's
DESTROY A HUB: buy it out. as you can't do much about the location all that's left is take the market away from the hub and it's vanished. ok, you need to maintain this buy-out quite some time to really destroy it and never can be sure if it wont rise again and also this will eat some trillions ofc. oh found an end-game there :)
erm drifted off again sry :)
|
Estrixx
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 19:29:00 -
[6]
Originally by: Brisco Smiley Estrixx, if you have not already done so, I suggest poking around all the links in the sticky threads. There is a tremendous wealth of information available (eve-central historical market dumps for example). Be aware that it is not always clearly cataloged and marked as important. Though people enjoy sharing what they learn from experience, this is a game in which the informed prey upon the uninformed. The very most precious resources provide raw information with the restriction that you must figure out how to use it. As game theory, the most effective rule sets are closely guarded secrets. I suggest playing through the trial period to gain some basis for understanding the material available here.
Thanks for the suggestion. I am familiar with eve-central. I checked that their market dumps date back to 2006. This might be useful (as far as ascertaining volume of trading in systems over time). My ultimate data set will need a movement of trading volume through systems over time, which seems a relatively easy parse from these logs. The only thing I'm worried about is the fact that the trade hubs as they are now might not have moved appreciably from 2006. I already have the official database dumps and imported them into sql express. I've also traded in this game for a few weeks just out of passing interest, which is how I got interested in examining EVE's trade hubs in the context of a coordination game.
Originally by: Brisco Smiley
CCP has an economist on staff. With academic credentials, you could probably get hard statistics from their databases.
...
Send us a link when you publish.
Since this is a very preliminary stage, I wouldn't feel comfortable asking for any official statistics not already available to the community (mainly because I only need some rough data to do some quick statistics). I am also unsure, given the data, if I could set up amechanism design that could replicate the current trade hub setup. These are rather gargantuan tasks so I will only pursue them if I think it feasible.
However, thanks for your responses so far. As a followup question, how long has Jita/Rens been the main trade hubs? If they have been such since 2006, I'm not sure how useful the eve-central historical dumps will be since I'm mainly interested in the formation/movement of the trade hubs over time. If they've stayed static for the past few years, I might be limited by insufficient data!
In the misty, distant future, given that I publish on this very topic, I will be sure put up a working paper for comment. Thanks again for your help!
|
Quilan Mesura
Pangalactic United Trading
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 19:35:00 -
[7]
i think the rise of jita began in '05...
|
Drab Cane
Caldari Mining Emporium inc.
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 19:48:00 -
[8]
Interesting, that Jita has grown for much the same reason as RL cities - location, initial advantages, then critical mass of population.
From my player point of view, Jita harbors an immense number of traders, so it typically has the lowest selling prices, and highest buy order prices. This creates a lot of volume passing through the station, which attracts the traders to begin with.
The game mechanics do not limit this kind of growth like RL might - a trader does not pay rent when buying/selling from a station, while in RL rent / property taxes not only exist but are based on property values that escalate as a locale becomes more popular.
There are few barriers to trade in EvE.
The most limited resource in the game is a player's time, and thanks to the game mechanics, it takes time to travel across systems and between systems. So, one of the largest barriers to trade is distance.
Another barrier to trade is the existence of low-sec / 0.0 sec systems, which are more dangerous to travel through.
Both of these limitations have contributed to the popularity of Jita's location.
The one limitation to Jita's growth I've seen has already been mentioned. More players in a system causes an increased load on the servers - the resulting lag time and occasionally restricted access has been getting worse, and has already begun to deter some players from using Jita.
Already some trade is leaking to nearby systems.
- Who Dares, Wins |
Bryg Philomena
Green Lantern Corps
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 21:14:00 -
[9]
Jita lags really bad now, I only go there when absolutely necesary. Locations is nice, and when kitting a new ship, I like to be able to get everything I need in one place.
Also, check Amarr, it is quickly rising as a trade hub.
Originally by: CCP Wrangler Am I reading this correctly? You claim you have a bug that undresses female avatars???
|
Hie Loe
Gallente Intergalactic Science LLC
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 22:19:00 -
[10]
What about Oursulaert? I keep an alt there as well as one in Jita, and the price difference and selection is not that high. Although sometimes a run can be worthwhile, the prices seem to invariably stabilize.
HL
I want a better signature. |
|
Myrdyr
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 22:54:00 -
[11]
I guess it depends what you're looking for, this is just the arbitrary ranking of "hub"-ness I have in my head: Jita > Oursalaert > Dodixie > Rens > Amarr > Hek
With secondary hubs being places like (in no particular order): Motsu / Vuorassi / Orvolle / Stacmon / Agil ... I'm sure I'm missing a couple. Please post constructively. ~Saint |
Selene D'Celeste
Caldari The D'Celeste Estate
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 23:04:00 -
[12]
FYI I've done graduate work in multiagent learning from the AI side, but I had to get familiar with some game theory. Look me up so we can chat as academics sometime ;)
Originally by: Myrdyr I guess it depends what you're looking for, this is just the arbitrary ranking of "hub"-ness I have in my head: Jita > Oursalaert > Dodixie > Rens > Amarr > Hek
With secondary hubs being places like (in no particular order): Motsu / Vuorassi / Orvolle / Stacmon / Agil ... I'm sure I'm missing a couple.
This isn't bad. More or less you have your main hub for the galaxy, then your empire-level hubs, then the local hubs and the mission runner locales. The above list is fair, though I don't recall Dodixie being more popular than Rens, and I thought Hek was moving up quite a bit?
The secondary list is a good assortment. Each is located in useful places for people to base out of for both pvp into 0.0 or lowsec, and to mission/rat from.
|
Roemy Schneider
BINFORD Solidus Alliance
|
Posted - 2008.01.29 23:18:00 -
[13]
humm the high-sec route between jita and rens is what..? 25j? so i'm sure it will at least prevail as one of those trade outposts. mission runners are the best consumers. an that part (heimatar) has the best "density" when it comes to minnie kill missions. and important for me though probably less important for most people: although my mission days are long over, i still "enjoy" high standings with minmatar/gallente - amarr/caldari brokers, however, have become quite mean to me :o i simply prefer trading in rens. - putting the gist back into logistics |
Estrixx
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 10:23:00 -
[14]
These responses have been incredibly helpful. Thanks for all your input. Looking at the starmap I discovered something somewhat intriguing (or obvious). The degree centrality of certain systems (ex: Jita) within a given region correlates highly with the system population. It also seems plausible that given this, betweenness centrality of a given system within a region might be an even more accurate indicator of "hubness". This might explain why trade hubs evolved to where they are now (i.e. a function of centrality of a system).
However, one thing I'm still puzzled about is that Yulai was once the major trade hub according to some responses here. This does not have an obvious explanation, although it might be that it's betweenness centrality might be high.
So I guess two follow-up questions:
1. Has the jump network changed at all in the past few years? (are there any patch notes that might indicate which jump nodes changed?)
2. Any particular hypothesis as to why Yulai was the major trade hub beforehand?
|
Kwint Sommer
Incoherent Inc Otaku Invasion
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 11:07:00 -
[15]
The number of regions has expanded significantly in recent years. I believe the layout of gates has changed since EvE went live thought not in the last 3 years. The introduction and ultimate removal of highways as well as changes to the security status of systems has also helped shape trade routes.
Many of the secondary and tertiary hubs have been created by mission agents. Two examples of heavy trading do to agents is in Motsu (it and it's neighter Aramachi have excellent agents) and more recently in Sivala.
Then there's people like me who rarely go to Jita but do heavy trading there using remote buy/sell/modify orders and couriers. I'm doing around 25B a month in trading there and I've only been twice in the last month. I have a dedicated courier whom I pay to move whatever I need between my high-sec base of operations and Jita. My times worth a lot more to me than the few hundred mil a month this costs.
5% Mining & Manufacturing Implants |
K'dararle
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 12:05:00 -
[16]
Originally by: Estrixx Edited by: Estrixx on 30/01/2008 10:35:34 These responses have been incredibly helpful. Thanks for all your input. Looking at the starmap I discovered something somewhat intriguing (or obvious). The degree centrality of certain systems (ex: Jita) within a given region correlates highly with the system population. It also seems plausible that given this, betweenness centrality of a given system within a region might be an even more accurate indicator of "hubness". This might explain why trade hubs evolved to where they are now (i.e. a function of centrality of a system as someone mentioned already -- although I'm trying to quantify this).
However, one thing I'm still puzzled about is that Yulai was once the major trade hub according to some responses here. This does not have an obvious explanation, although it might be that it's betweenness centrality might be high.
So I guess two follow-up questions:
1. Has the jump network changed at all in the past few years? (are there any patch notes that might indicate which jump nodes changed?)
2. Any particular hypothesis as to why Yulai was the major trade hub beforehand? (I understand it isn't now because of low sec changes to intervening systems)
Yulai used to literally be the centre of the universe. This caused ccp server problems which ccp tried to solve by surrounding Yulai with a couple of .4s in all direction. Supposedly ccp hoped trade would be evenly dispersed in all directions from Yulai. Unfortunately trade only got dispersed in the direction of the caldari regions. This solution to the old problem then caused the new problem of Jita which you would hope ccp are addressing at the moment
|
Starquinia
Minmatar Starfield United Technologies LLP
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 12:19:00 -
[17]
Edited by: Starquinia on 30/01/2008 12:20:08
Originally by: Estrixx Edited by: Estrixx on 30/01/2008 10:35:34 ...
So I guess two follow-up questions:
1. Has the jump network changed at all in the past few years? (are there any patch notes that might indicate which jump nodes changed?)
2. Any particular hypothesis as to why Yulai was the major trade hub beforehand? (I understand it isn't now because of low sec changes to intervening systems)
Yulai was originally notheing special. CCP introduced "Superhighways" which more or less allowed you to jump regions rather than systems. (very simplistic ciew) Yulai was at the centre of the superhighway network so was a natural spot for a hub. As an ur-Jita it caused CCP problems so they surrounded Yulai with the superhighways rather than link it directly, rather like the M25 and equally ineffective at reducing traffic.
In the end, superhighways were removed and the rise of Jita began. -------------------------------------- See the Eve History Wiki, where YOU won the GNW!
|
Siri Blue
Gallente Arachnea Phoenix Battalion Phalanx Alliance
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 13:48:00 -
[18]
I hate Jita, I never go to Jita, the Caldari wouldn't let me anyways...unless I come with a fleet maybe...
There are a LOT of market manipulations going on in Jita... In general...for a seller - Jita is really bad as there are so many ppl trying to sell the same crap - so your profits are slim - unless you manipulate the market...then its bad for the buyers... Either way - Jita is bad!
Re-Introduce Non-ISK-Mission rewards, please. |
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 13:57:00 -
[19]
Jita is not THAT bad for several reasons...
One does not have to be IN Jita to trade in Jita 4-4. Trade skills ftw. Profit margins are thin, manipulation is occasionally rampant, but at least volumes are crazy high. Therefore, prices in Jita are usually slightly higher as the "galactic average", but they ARE very close to it. Therefore, both buyers AND sellers that are in a hurry can simply go there, and either buy just about anything they like, or unload pretty much anything, and get a "fair price" for it either way.
The only (two) bad thing(s) about Jita ? Lag and suicide-gank squads. Which are closely related.
1|2|3|4|5. |
Selene D'Celeste
Caldari The D'Celeste Estate
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 17:00:00 -
[20]
Originally by: Akita T Jita is not THAT bad for several reasons...
Pretty much an accurate summary.
|
|
Cker Heel
The Graduates Brutally Clever Empire
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 19:46:00 -
[21]
The hubs are all about topology.
Before Cold War patch (July 2005), Yulai was within a few hops of all the empire regions and was THE hub for all trading.
Cold War eliminated the so-called superhighway gates. These were normal stargates, but connected widely seperated empire systems. If you warp to the old bookmarks for the gates, the billboards are still there.
When the gates were taken down, everyone speculated where the new hubs would be. Cold War paired off the racial empires (Amarr+Caldar and Gallente+Minmatar) as two superfactions.
The shortest route between the home systems of rival factions now went through low sec. A slightly longer safe route stayed in high-sec. These safe routes all went near Jita.
Each racial empire developed a hub (Jita, Amarr, Rens and Ours). As mentioned above Caldari had the most mission runners boosting Jita, which became the largest of the racial empire hubs.
Ever since, Jita has continued to grow, taking over from Yulai as the central market for all Eve. CCP has fiddled with the map around Jita a couple times since Cold War. The long-haul autopilot routes now avoid it. Before, Jita was on any route crossing Calari space. |
Estrixx
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 22:05:00 -
[22]
Edited by: Estrixx on 30/01/2008 22:14:33
Originally by: Cker Heel The hubs are all about topology.
Before Cold War patch (July 2005), Yulai was within a few hops of all the empire regions and was THE hub for all trading.
Cold War eliminated the so-called superhighway gates. These were normal stargates, but connected widely seperated empire systems. If you warp to the old bookmarks for the gates, the billboards are still there.
When the gates were taken down, everyone speculated where the new hubs would be. Cold War paired off the racial empires (Amarr+Caldar and Gallente+Minmatar) as two superfactions.
The shortest route between the home systems of rival factions now went through low sec. A slightly longer safe route stayed in high-sec. These safe routes all went near Jita.
Each racial empire developed a hub (Jita, Amarr, Rens and Ours). As mentioned above Caldari had the most mission runners boosting Jita, which became the largest of the racial empire hubs.
Ever since, Jita has continued to grow, taking over from Yulai as the central market for all Eve. CCP has fiddled with the map around Jita a couple times since Cold War. The long-haul autopilot routes now avoid it. Before, Jita was on any route crossing Calari space.
Thanks for this very informative post. Essentially what you are saying with Jita is that beforehand, the autopilot would calculate routes through Caldari space that almost always went through Jita (i.e. shortest path from one point in Caldari space to another tended to involved Jita?). This fits with my hypothesis that Jita's betweenness centrality made it into a regional trade hub. My hypothesis is that degree centrality and between centrality contribute to coordinated hubs being located at those regions. If you aren't sure what I mean by those terms, check this wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality
Already, my initial findings seem to imply a high correlation between weight centrality and hubness. I need to put in some more work to determine a system's between centrality, but I have a feeling it will also correlate. This will actually involve some time coding, but I'll be sure to report the results.
Intuitively, this means trade hubs grow around vertexes (systems) with high centrality, which seems almost obvious. The interesting thing, though, is that this normally can't be tested in real life since trade hubs often arise through historical accident and it's unclear a lot of times which "nodes" (cities") have high centrality. This may be a good start for an explanation of a solution to a coordination game. My motivation in conducting this experiment through eve is that it represents an ideal virtual universe to test these sorts of hypothesis because they are much simpler environments (i.e. nodes and travel work in a simplistic and highly deterministic way). I'm actually rather excited about this hypothesis.
|
Shaitis
Caldari Four Rings Phalanx Alliance
|
Posted - 2008.01.30 23:26:00 -
[23]
Originally by: Bryg Philomena Jita lags really bad now, I only go there when absolutely necesary. Locations is nice, and when kitting a new ship, I like to be able to get everything I need in one place.
Also, check Amarr, it is quickly rising as a trade hub.
Amarr is very specyfic, its for lazy Amarr bastards...prices there are 20% bigger than Jita (except some Cadari stuff) and some months ago you could do great amount of money just by buying in Jita and selling in Amarr - which is not a case anymore. Anyway I wish Amarr had changed in to new Jita. "What is funnier ? 20 Matari slaves pinned to one tree or 1 Matari slave pinned to 20 trees ?" |
Ramblin Man
Empyreum
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 00:14:00 -
[24]
Tbh, as someone who has an alt in the region, I'd say Hek > Rens.
For whatever reason (maybe agents being moved?), Rens seems to have died off recently in terms of adequate volume and competitive pricing. There's a lot of times I go shopping and find Rens unstocked, while Hek is and typically gives a good 4% discount or so on items in both locations.
Welcome to the dark side old friend. .Shar Where we hate people through words. |
Ashina Sito
Center for Advanced Studies
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 03:14:00 -
[25]
Edited by: Ashina Sito on 31/01/2008 03:16:41 I have to mention one element that others are missing.
Caldari/Achura
Most pilots in Eve are Caldari. This is do to the attribute distrubution that you can get with the Caldari Achura. A 3 starting Charisma allows you to boost your other stats. In addition to this the Caldari Raven is the best mission running ship. Most of the player base see high sec mission running as the easiest way to make ISK. Put this all together and you get...
I want to make a pilot, Caldari Achura Monk gets me the best stats. I am going to do missions so keep training caldari ships and eventualy get the Raven to breeze through missions. I do missions out of Jita 4-4 because that is where the best agents are. Jita 4-4 then gets the most mission runners. This in turn makes it the largest High sec market. Add to this the central location of Jita within Caldari space. Critical mass is created and your off. The fact that Jita 4-4 is no longer a mission station is moot since critical mass was reached.
I should note that this is the reason that Dodixie is a sizable trade location. The best high sec Fed Navy agent is in Dodixie and the local population will reach about 260 durring peak. This of course discounts the 200-250 pilots that are on a mission in one of the neighboring systems.
Amarr is a bit of an odd duck but, as populations rise I would expect to see a decent increase in the use of Amarr space. If you want lag free mission running without scavengers or ore thieves go to Amarr, The Land of the Dead. With a possable Amarr boost looming this becomes even more likely.
|
Estrixx
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 09:16:00 -
[26]
It seems agents and missions runners also assert a heavy pull on what systems become hubs.
Sometime in the near future I'm going to set up a survey to ask some of these questions so I can get a formal data set.
Two last question would be the following:
1. Why do you think Rens is/was a trade hub? If you believe it is no longer a trade hub, why do you think it is no longer?
2. If you think Hek is becoming more a hub, why do you think this is the case?
|
Kylar Renpurs
Dusk Blade
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 09:27:00 -
[27]
Mmmh, hek is definately growing as a trade hub IMO, I was surprised at its market,, I only went to rens before and was rather disappointed.
Improve Market Competition! |
Inertial
The Scope
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 09:40:00 -
[28]
Edited by: Inertial on 31/01/2008 09:40:53 Having recently been based out of Hek, I would say that it is hardly a trade hub. This is a tip for all you traders out there. Hek lacks several Gallente Cruiser items, such as the Vexor, Hammerheads, M Regulated Electron Blasters etc. Teonusade is a better trade hub than Hek. Other places would be: Oursalaert an Renyn.
|
Ghreymar LaNayeur
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 10:50:00 -
[29]
Originally by: Inertial Edited by: Inertial on 31/01/2008 09:40:53 Having recently been based out of Hek, I would say that it is hardly a trade hub. This is a tip for all you traders out there. Hek lacks several Gallente Cruiser items, such as the Vexor, Hammerheads, M Regulated Electron Blasters etc. Teonusade is a better trade hub than Hek. Other places would be: Oursalaert an Renyn.
you can't really count oursalaert and renyn as separate trade hubs, thats like separating jita and perimeter
it would be interesting to see the difference that WTZ made on trade hubs, since the extra jumps to jita now constitute only a few minutes rather than hours on autopilot. that might have had alot to do with centralizing markets, such as the automobile/highways had on cities
|
Oleksiy1
|
Posted - 2008.01.31 13:24:00 -
[30]
Personally I like jita 4-4. I don't have any lags cause I don't reside in jita. Couple of jumps away from j4-4 can solve lag issues. That's the first thing! Secondly - turnover - it's amazing how many items are sold and bought in Jita. And that's awesome! Thirdly - list of items - countless, a client can get everything in j4-4. ItĘs really cose to have all items in one place. These are the major factors why I have chosen j4-4 as my trade hub. Recently I have traveled to Rens just to check out how things are over there. I was disappointed! No turnover, no items - that place is dieing! IMHO j4-4 is the only effective trade hub in eve universe, maybe in the future some more appear, but at the moment the fact remains.
|
|
|
|
|
Pages: [1] 2 :: one page |
First page | Previous page | Next page | Last page |