So it turns out that Spiral Knights already has a form of PVP that's been thriving. However it's not a battle of skill, knowledge, reaction times or experience.
It's a battle of wallets. It's a battle that is inherently predisposed against new players, in entrenching the old guard and ultimately poisoning the well.
But Hanekeda, what could you ever possibly mean?
Now unfortunately I had a forum thread and post by a Spiral Knights member admitting to using his immense reserves of CE/CR to build what are known as Market Walls. This individual deleted his posts and I wasn't prescient enough to save the image link showing his tab with well near 100 orders in the buy and sell columns. These are basically artificial barriers to drive the price in one direction and prevent the market from adhering honestly to the rules of supply and demand.
If they've got the resources and that's what they want to do, let them!
This is a genuine and very real concern. However it's detrimental to the overall health of the game. A company like 3R wants Crowns and Crystal Energy to enter the market, through mob drops and vendor sales (crowns) and CE (either directly from 3R or second hand from players looking to convert CE to CR) and then they want to see these two currencies leave, through the purchase, crafting and use of items.
You're probably still wondering how exactly this is a bad thing.
These people don't lose anything by driving the price higher with listings they have no intention of completing. If you cancel an order, you've got the exact same amount of CE or Crowns that you had when you started. It's everything a market manipulator could hope for, and it gives older players, or those more willing to spend with their credit card the power to indirectly turn the rest of the player base at large into their own personal gold farming army.
You've made my eyes bleed Hanekeda, what are you getting at?
What I believe would be the simplest fix, since you don't pay anything what so ever, short of the 2% sellers fee to discourage people with an abundant amount of currency from artificially driving the prices of CE higher (indirectly turning the player base at larger into their own personal gold farmers without ever having to commit their CE/CR reserves, by simply cancelling their orders after others have reacted and raised their prices accordingly) would be upfront, non refundable fees when listings are made.
2% on each side. For your average every day player, this isn't a big concern, when listings are made, most players make them with the intent to complete them. For manipulators, up front, non refundable listing fees should in effect be a death sentence, as every time they try to 'nudge' the market or prevent it from falling lower, they have to complete transactions, or pour crowns into a bottomless pit.
I was wondering if others had noticed people doing this. Sounds like a good plan to me.