OK, I gotta vent. Are people stupid or... Stupid?

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Originally Posted by Mychael

Quiz time! Why does walmart sell things for 10-20% less than other stores when they could break even or even a make a profit with 50-60% markdowns in many cases?

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Median pricing. The market will always search for its median this according to Smith in Wealth of Nations. Walmart will sell its products for the highest profit margin it can. Walmart can still be undercut and is quite often by Target, especially when it comes to food. Targets supplier chain makes it possible for them to often get food at a cheaper price than Walmart. Other products Walmart gets for cheaper and can make a larger margin. Seriously this all pretty common sense stuff. Sell your goods for the lowest profit margin and hope you can make up the difference in volume of sales, or you can sell at a higher margin and not get the volume. You just need to read the market and make the right moves.

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Originally Posted by Lux_Rayna

Guess what happens when I undercut. Mine sells, someone else's didnt. I still made a profit. Profit is profit..who cares if you could've made more. Holding out for more could mean not selling at all cuz someone else sold it cheaper. Ever traded stocks? I have. Know what happens when you hold out for more profit? You make 0 profit. You think a smart investor complains when he makes a 50% profit on anything? Heck no. You can call me stupid for taking 90k profit over 120k profit, but as I see it I have 90k in my pocket and you still have 0. If you think that makes me an idiot please, by all means, call me an idiot. Have fun trying to squeeze out 20k while ppl undercut you for bigger profits.

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This really is the bottom line.

Look, does getting undercut suck? Yes. But the reality is it is going to happen no matter what in a game where everyone can level every craft and every harvest class. It is going to happen in a game where materials are disgustingly plentiful, even HQ materials.

When it is all said and done, if I can make a 50k profit now or wait 2 weeks to make a 100k profit, I'm going to go with the lower profit because it was more than I had a few moments ago and now I can sell something else for even more profit.

Something needs to be done in this game, I will be the first to say, because we have a situation where mats sell for more than the items you create with them. That's pretty damn retarded but it is the state of the game right now. By the way, I agree with Vedis and OP that it doesn't make sense to create an item with mats and sell for less than you could have made just putting the mats up on the wards to sell. That's why I only sell mats now and I still find myself vendoring mats because I get them faster than I can sell them.

However, undercutting is not the disease, it is just a symptom of the real issue. Let's fix the real problem and undercutting, while still present, will not be felt so harshly by people.

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Originally Posted by Lstkaws

Median pricing. The market will always search for its median this according to Smith in Wealth of Nations. Walmart will sell its products for the highest profit margin it can. Walmart can still be undercut and is quite often by Target, especially when it comes to food. Targets supplier chain makes it possible for them to often get food at a cheaper price than Walmart. Other products Walmart gets for cheaper and can make a larger margin. Seriously this all pretty common sense stuff. Sell your goods for the lowest profit margin and hope you can make up the difference in volume of sales, or you can sell at a higher margin and not get the volume. You just need to read the market and make the right moves.

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I see someone knows their stuff. Kudos!

Here's an idea. Shut up and see if the server merge doesnt help move things along. If it doesn't then oh well boo hoo. You expect a stable active economy in a dead game?

Someone yank his ankle and pull him from the clouds...

I never have trouble making money as a GSM. There's lot's of ways to make money as any craft OTHER than catering to the niche leetist crowd that likes to blow dough on optimal +1 gear.

Think outside the box Ronald McDonald and you might surprise yourself.

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Originally Posted by djjdiss

Here's an idea. Shut up and see if the server merge doesnt help move things along. If it doesn't then oh well boo hoo. You expect a stable active economy in a dead game?

Someone yank his ankle and pull him from the clouds...

I never have trouble making money as a GSM. There's lot's of ways to make money as any craft OTHER than catering to the niche leetist crowd that likes to blow dough on optimal +1 gear.

Think outside the box Ronald McDonald and you might surprise yourself.

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How dare you advocate "thinking" instead of mindlessly throwing items on the MW and raging cuz you're not making money. What is this "outside the box" thing you speak of?

OK so the point is still being missed by many, because apparently we were talking about real life </sarcasm>. So let's do this BACKWARDS:

I lose 1 million gil trying to get a ring+1 because I kept failing the synth (80-90% chance fail remember?) and the materials cost me 200k per attempt.

After the 5th try I make a ring+1 and want to sell it for a profit... God forbid I want to make a decent profit because you know, I LOST 1 MILLION GIL earlier.

Why is my precious ring+1 selling for exactly the same price it costs to make?

Answer me that Lux_Rayna.

Edit: Oh right, let me guess, you're probably gonna say something along the lines "People farmed their own materials! They lost ZERO gil!" Well then if you're such a business man, you should probably know that TIME IS MONEY. Lesson number 1 isn't it? I have a friend that's a Miner50 and he said he gets around 3 ores +1 in a couple of hours or so, and that ring+1 uses 3x ores +1.

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Originally Posted by Wynn

This really is the bottom line.

Look, does getting undercut suck? Yes. But the reality is it is going to happen no matter what in a game where everyone can level every craft and every harvest class. It is going to happen in a game where materials are disgustingly plentiful, even HQ materials.

When it is all said and done, if I can make a 50k profit now or wait 2 weeks to make a 100k profit, I'm going to go with the lower profit because it was more than I had a few moments ago and now I can sell something else for even more profit.

Something needs to be done in this game, I will be the first to say, because we have a situation where mats sell for more than the items you create with them. That's pretty damn retarded but it is the state of the game right now. By the way, I agree with Vedis and OP that it doesn't make sense to create an item with mats and sell for less than you could have made just putting the mats up on the wards to sell. That's why I only sell mats now and I still find myself vendoring mats because I get them faster than I can sell them.

However, undercutting is not the disease, it is just a symptom of the real issue. Let's fix the real problem and undercutting, while still present, will not be felt so harshly by people.

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I would pose to you this question..WHy do mats sell for more than the finished product? The answer is demand. Now we must examine why mats have higher demand than the finished product. This is because the need to level up DoH. There is simply more demand for the mats than the product. That combined with an abundance of gil by much of the player base creates a market for which mats are of more value.

This may stem for the ability to quickly level DoW and DoM and the requisite move to leveling DoH and DoL classes. Hopefully this will change in 2.0, we will see. The fact remains the market we have right now is what we have for the foreseeable future.

To all undercutters, check out the nash equilibrium.......... we could all be making lots more instead of just you making just a little. (in theory) in practice there are too many crafters to expect to make any money crafting. It'll stay that way until it restricts one person to one craft.

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Originally Posted by Irzibe

OK so the point is still being missed by many, because apparently we were talking about real life </sarcasm>. So let's do this BACKWARDS:

I lose 1 million gil trying to get a ring+1 because I kept failing the synth (80-90% chance fail remember?) and the materials cost me 200k per attempt.

After the 5th try I make a ring+1 and want to sell it for a profit... God forbid I want to make a decent profit because you know, I LOST 1 MILLION GIL earlier.

Why is my precious ring+1 selling for exactly the same price it costs to make?

Answer me that Lux_Rayna.

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I will answer this. Once again the answer is........ you guessed it DEMAND! The demand for your +1 ring is too low for you to sell at a profit. QUIT MAKING THEM. To continue making them is foolish. You will continue to lose gil. Supply side economics my friend.

If this was a Chinese game you could just get SE to subsidize your crafting. Maybe you can talk SE into allowing you to NPC your ring for a 10% profit. Still a decent margin in some industries although jewelry is not one of those industries.

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Originally Posted by Lstkaws

I would pose to you this question..WHy do mats sell for more than the finished product? The answer is demand. Now we must examine why mats have higher demand than the finished product. This is because the need to level up DoH. There is simply more demand for the mats than the product. That combined with an abundance of gil by much of the player base creates a market for which mats are of more value.

This may stem for the ability to quickly level DoW and DoM and the requisite move to leveling DoH and DoL classes. Hopefully this will change in 2.0, we will see. The fact remains the market we have right now is what we have for the foreseeable future.

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Too true... And of course, all that DoH leveling floods the market with tons of finished product, driving the prices right down into the ground.

As much as I hate to say it, because I loved the concept, I really think allowing players to level up all crafts was a mistake.

They need to make gear break permanently or something to drive up the demand for gear and strip it from the wards faster (yeah right lol)