Undercut Hell

also lol at people trying to collude to fix prices at artificially high rates. get bent

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

The market has crashed many times over apparently.

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This cycle is actually not uncommon. Sometimes a lot of people decide to sell one item and it bring down the price, a lot and fast. As much as I hate to sit on inventory, I just move out of the market until the price comes back.

The markets are generally pretty volatile, but that's to be expected. Even the largest servers have a low population for a market system.

lol @ people that can't compete and come to forums to whine about it though.

I always laugh hysterically when I see sellers who think they have the right or even capacity to dictate prices in a free market, ESPECIALLY in an MMO.

Supply for goods in MMOs is always increasing. Always. Every day there are new crafters/gatherers able to produce the same goods as you; there's no such thing as branding, every item can be guaranteed by the fact that it's a video game to be identical in quality and function. Therefore, every new seller on the market is absolute competition, and the only meaningful distinction between sellers is their price points.
Prices are set as a factor of quality, material cost, labor/logistics cost, tax, and other surcharges (e.g. branding)
We already know that quality, tax, and material cost are fixed for all sellers, (HQ vs NQ notwithstanding, as they are effectively different goods) and the thing that I think trips up most sellers who complain about undercutting is that labor has no real value in this game. SE is not providing you with subsidies, there is no minimum wage, and 99% of all sellers/crafters are NOT hiring other people to produce goods that need to be compensated. Your labor has only the value of what the market gives it when buyers/sellers decide to price goods. The sellers that get all upset about undercutting have some magical idea in their heads of what their labor is worth, have tacked on some artificial value on top of that as their desired profit, and then get butthurt when the price point starts cutting into what they think are labor costs.

Here's a hint: the open market will not give even a moment's consideration to what YOU think your labor is worth. If some other seller is okay with charging slightly less because they think that's still a fair price for their labor, there is not a damn thing you can do about it. Especially because this is a video game, where material supply is limitless in all but the most niche of instances, (time-locked materials like Platinum/Glazenuts, artificially limited goods like Demimateria/ventures, etc.) market prices for finished products will ALWAYS slowly drift down from the inflation of new content releases until they bottom out at material cost + a small margin. This margin is dictated by the number of SELLERS willing to SELL at low labor costs, so the size of it tends to vary by the rarity of the product, but the point is that having large margins will never ever be sustainable. The sooner you get that into your head the more profit you will make.

I love it when the undercutting has gotten so bad that its more profitable to just sell it to an NPC vendor.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

I love it when the undercutting has gotten so bad that its more profitable to just sell it to an NPC vendor.

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I do this from time to time, I find people going below NPC price on something and buy up an bunch of stacks of stuff 1-5 gil below NPC price and walk over to a NPC and sell them all for 99-500 gil for basically doing nothing.

Pays for my next teleport anyways.

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Originally Posted by Melondra

Im glad im not the only one that agrees on this a Blind Auction must be implemented in order for this game to survive. As for you FANBOY's out there im glad half of u were not in Alpha or beta or this game would be even more screwed up.

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Was in beta.

Take your ignorant assumptions elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Aunalise

This thread is so entertaining!



LOL. Love to find someone who would undercut by 10k every time. At some point I buy the item from them myself, turn around and realize more profit from it than they just did when I bought it.

A vending machine is owned by one guy or company, and he sets ALL the prices on everything in it. The Board is 1000s of people selling the same items at different prices because they each value them differently. The 1g undercutter may value it at 40K less than current market price, but he isn't going to leave 40K on the table if he's smart.

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This doesn't work when you have more stock up then they can afford to buy.

Market control is half part saturation and half part pricing.

I hope i'm not the only one who feels this way, but it's actually the 1g under-cutters that annoy me and I purposely avoid them and purchase the item below them.

If you want me to buy your product out of 60 others, it is going to take more than just being top of the list and 1g cheaper.

"I don't understand how cost vs demand works!"

Uhh o... k...
I don't see how any of that is our nor SE's concern though?

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

Tried to sell some rush grass today at 34k(the current listing price) and some hours later 3 people decide to list at 17k and 19.999 gil. They don't choose 33k or 30k, but cut to nearly 50% of everyone else. This is what pisses me off because now everyone else is gonna list at those prices and the market crashes.

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Or you could of brought the three out and made yourself 45k!