How do you react to being undercut?

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Originally Posted by ReviiLagoon

Play EVE Online, people will undercut you by .01 isk (EVE's currency) when something costs 7 billion isk to buy. Imagine sitting somewhere for 8 hours constantly adjusting your price by .01 in order for it to sell in a reasonable amount of time. You think we have it bad that people undercut by 1 gil every so often? Imagine it happening every 5 min, by 10 different people.

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There just isn't anything else to do, when gate camping in CVA space (so many tears!).. I'll just log on my Jita trader alt and make billions of profit... All while harvesting CVA tears!

Maybe if people weren't selling things for rediculous prices in the first place....

I did see an Ash Lumber for sale for 60gil. A single Lumber. Why?

I don't think this is a game where longer term, crafting will be hugely profitable. I'm not saying you can't make money doing it - of course you can - but it won't be like the FFXI crafting system. I feel this way because:

- It's not particularly difficult or expensive to level a DoH or DoL job (comparative to FFXI at least)
- Many of the best in-game items are dropped, not crafted
- There is a much lower degree of luck

Some FFXI items had a <1% HQ rate and were the best items in their slot by far. The NQs sold at break even or loss but HQ was a huge profit. This was also because each character could only max 1 craft. In FFXIV you can max them all quickly and few top level crafts have difficult to obtain ingredients.

I craft because I enjoy it, and make some money for now, but I expect prices, particularly on top level items, to fall rather than rise because more and more people will be capped to craft them. For that reason - I undercut till it sells.

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Originally Posted by Rrylia

I undercut till it sells.

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Indeed.

Setting the price is a mental balancing act between "What's a fair price?", "How quickly will it sell?" and "How much can I get?" If I see a lot of an item that I can manufacture for 50 gil for sale at 5,000, I post one of mine for maybe 1,500 gil, get a quick sale, and use the profits to buy up more materials.

I also like to do what an earlier poster described as profiting from the laziness or inertia of others. For instance, one of the Fishing quests requires Rat Tails, but they aren't for sale everywhere. You have to go to certain towns to get them. So I buy up a stack of 99 Rat Tails for 4 gil each, and resell them for 10 or 15 gil each. Not a huge amount of cash, but it's a simple transaction, the turnaround is fast, and if I'm in the area anyway I might as well buy up exclusive local goods and re-sell them.

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Originally Posted by Selah

Indeed.

Setting the price is a mental balancing act between "What's a fair price?", "How quickly will it sell?" and "How much can I get?" If I see a lot of an item that I can manufacture for 50 gil for sale at 5,000, I post one of mine for maybe 1,500 gil, get a quick sale, and use the profits to buy up more materials.

I also like to do what an earlier poster described as profiting from the laziness or inertia of others. For instance, one of the Fishing quests requires Rat Tails, but they aren't for sale everywhere. You have to go to certain towns to get them. So I buy up a stack of 99 Rat Tails for 4 gil each, and resell them for 10 or 15 gil each. Not a huge amount of cash, but it's a simple transaction, the turnaround is fast, and if I'm in the area anyway I might as well buy up exclusive local goods and re-sell them.

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Goby balls are also another ;)

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Originally Posted by Selah

Indeed.

Setting the price is a mental balancing act between "What's a fair price?", "How quickly will it sell?" and "How much can I get?" If I see a lot of an item that I can manufacture for 50 gil for sale at 5,000, I post one of mine for maybe 1,500 gil, get a quick sale, and use the profits to buy up more materials.

I also like to do what an earlier poster described as profiting from the laziness or inertia of others. For instance, one of the Fishing quests requires Rat Tails, but they aren't for sale everywhere. You have to go to certain towns to get them. So I buy up a stack of 99 Rat Tails for 4 gil each, and resell them for 10 or 15 gil each. Not a huge amount of cash, but it's a simple transaction, the turnaround is fast, and if I'm in the area anyway I might as well buy up exclusive local goods and re-sell them.

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I came from Malboro, and it is way easier to sell things at a high markup there than in Tonbery. Many things here in Tonbery sells at breakeven, and the higher level and star item sells at a small margin (10k for a piece of 1-star gear). The 2-star though, still goes for 350k+.

What I would like to point out from this exampls is that number of crafter/gatherer players and how active they are will determine the supply, thus the price. Undercutting amount can be quite at Malboro...and that's because the price was too high to begin with, and people have a lot of room to undercut. In Tonbery however, undercutting happens at smaller amount, and there are more players breaking bulk. It's just all part of the market.

As for how I react to this new environment, I starting buying more. Bought my full set of 1-star crafting gear for my two DoH class. Would had taken me way longer to craft it on my own.

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Originally Posted by KasZaria

Undercutting is normal so my reaction is like "damn" I just hate when people undercut by 1g. Thats the most annoying thing anyone could do in the market. Its funny when a 1g undercutter gets undercut by 1g lol

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actually its more stupid if you undercut something by 5k that sells for 30k

not really if it means mine sells and yours don't....

you can't compete with someone who gather his owns mats period.

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Originally Posted by El_Brujo

you can't compete with someone who gather his owns mats period.

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Very true. They pretty much can make a profit as long as it sells for more then 1 gil.

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Originally Posted by Gabbelgak

Generally speaking I will just undercut back all the way to the point where I'm doing nothing more than breaking even.

In markets that I feel are mine I will undercut to the point that we are both losing money and will continue to do so til you concede defeat and bow out of even trying anymore.

This has worked for me so far although I pretty sure half the crafters on the server hate me. I've had a couple of tells asking me to stop selling things so low.

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You can /tell retainers now?

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Originally Posted by Sanct

You can /tell retainers now?

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I don't think it's that - but for many items the name of the crafter is listed at the bottom of the item, so it's pretty obvious who owns the retainer(s). Also worth noting if you are trying to manipulate the markets (tut tut) because you will appear as the main buyer and as the crafter of all those overpriced items. You can however recycle the items (trade) to get rid of that.

But I undercut fairly often. It's because I find I'm often getting undercut by a mass of 1 gil less sellers. So I drop the price by 5, 10 or 50 gil depending on if I can still make a profit. If the market for the stuff in question gets saturated and the profit I can make is too low, I just pull it from the market for a while.

Also, I quit bothering trying to sell items that sell for less than 10 gil all the time. Even if the items are things that I got for free (drops, etc). Items like that don't move because everyone is trying to get rid of them. So I just discard them.

Working the market is an art. Sometimes you have to move to new areas of it for a while. When I undercut I'm just trying to get something to me quickly and also test the demand. If the demand is high it will sell fast and I'll know I can price it higher.

Just my thoughts...

True to a point. I'm a level 50 miner and a level 37 botanist. Selling raw material that are worth less than 20 gil isn't worth my time. In fact even if it's worth somewhat more than that I have to consider how much time do I want to spend mining for myself, selling raw materials on the market to others, etc. Sometimes if I use the raw materials to synth HQ intermediate materials I can get a much better profit. But I still had to spend the time gathering the materials.

Also for things like goat skins, raptor skins, etc. You have to go out and kill them. That takes time to. Some days it seems like they drop a lot of skins and other times they drop junk like aldgoat chuck. The market for the chuck is so saturated, even for HQ chuck that I just discard it. lol

Since flipping is almost impossible unless serius, serius undercutting.
Like yesterday someone selling HQ oak longbow at 2k while average price is 8K-

I have begin to do undercutting. I normally undercut for 100 or 200, and i have a floor of 5k per HQ item, if anyone is doing less, i stop, by either leaving the item there, or taking it out of the market.
Since i have a botanist 50 and i sell mostly carpenter HQ items, most of the main materials are free to me so im always making profit, but i also need that the products move, maybe im overproducing too much.

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Originally Posted by El_Brujo

you can't compete with someone who gather his owns mats period.

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And this is why I can undercut as much as I like and not be bothered by it. It's all profit anyway. For ppl who get mad at ones undercutting by more then 1 gil, stop calling the kettle black, its just as bad if not worse. You are flipping off the person you undercut by 1 gil and the buyer doesnt give a shit if hes saving 1 gil, but he would appreciate 5k. My drastically underpriced item will disapear quick and ppl will resume normal price while you guys can drive it down by 1 gil til its worthless.

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Originally Posted by Raagnar

And this is why I can undercut as much as I like and not be bothered by it. It's all profit anyway. For ppl who get mad at ones undercutting by more then 1 gil, stop calling the kettle black, its just as bad if not worse. You are flipping off the person you undercut by 1 gil and the buyer doesnt give a shit if hes saving 1 gil, but he would appreciate 5k. My drastically underpriced item will disapear quick and ppl will resume normal price while you guys can drive it down by 1 gil til its worthless.

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Anytime I see someone undercutting by 1 gil, it just makes me laugh. Im pretty sure that one gil isn't going to sway someones decision on a 5k item. I often buy the next higer priced item just out of principle. If you're going to undercut... undercut otherwise don't waste my time.

If I see someone trying to undercut by one gil, I drop the price and overload the market to scroll them off the screen.

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Originally Posted by Sanct

You can /tell retainers now?

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My retainer is named Gabbelgak, my charater is named Gabbelle Gak. I don't exactly hide.

Everything I sell so far are items I've gathered myself while leveling a job so it all becomes profit for time spent acquiring a higher goal. To me, anything valued on the market that is more than what I would get by npc'ing it. Is profit. In that regard, I will undercut depending on how much is currently listed. And how often it has been selling. I won't under cut if I don't have to, but if I do, it will be enough to get my item sold. What I won't do is play item tag by undercutting by 1 gil. I usually cut by 5-10%.

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Originally Posted by flamds1

Anytime I see someone undercutting by 1 gil, it just makes me laugh. Im pretty sure that one gil isn't going to sway someones decision on a 5k item. I often buy the next higer priced item just out of principle. If you're going to undercut... undercut otherwise don't waste my time.

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I do the same thing on big ticket items, and for that reason, I never respond to 1 gil undercuts.

For people dont realize is that, those 1g undercut is meaning less if say the people you undercutting have a different city retainer. Buying stuff in limsa from a grid retainer will put a fee on ur purchase, while buying from a limsa retainer is a lot cheaper due to no fee even the price tag is 1g higher. So I usually just switch around a retainer and stay 1g higer than the under cutter. And sometimes if people undercut too aggressively, I sell HQ par his NQ price just for the sake of it that I guarantee 100% HQ rate, so NQ HQ doesn't matter to me.

Do not underestimate 1 gil undercutting, someone didn't check the final price on confirmation box.

I never bought item from 1 gil cutter, it's just pointless and it shows the seller is lack of sincerity.

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Originally Posted by Hitaru

For people dont realize is that, those 1g undercut is meaning less if say the people you undercutting have a different city retainer. Buying stuff in limsa from a grid retainer will put a fee on ur purchase, while buying from a limsa retainer is a lot cheaper due to no fee even the price tag is 1g higher. So I usually just switch around a retainer and stay 1g higer than the under cutter. And sometimes if people undercut too aggressively, I sell HQ par his NQ price just for the sake of it that I guarantee 100% HQ rate, so NQ HQ doesn't matter to me.

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NQ and HQ are different markets, if u always HQ the end product why a NQ under cutter will bother you at all? I sold a lot of HQ at 15k when I am the only HQ seller and the NQ ones are just less than 1k.

I do not react very much to undercuts. I actually think they are the natural flow of a market,as long as they are done in a sane manner. If someone post a ton of stuff at vendor price or somethings silly, I may pull out and use my space for other goods. Often I will just let them sit as vendor price items normally sell off at a fast rate,for things I am dealing with anyway.

To sum up my view on it, I think undercutting is natural. I also think that this game promotes it a bit to much,and also leads the unknowing down the wrong path in some ways.

I would remove vendor values as the default price listing when we post an Item, we can see the vendor price with a mouse over anyway. I would also not show list prices,and a much shorter sale history. (not restarting this debate, just stating my thoughts) IMHO this will stop a lot of the herd mentality that can degrade the market for the rest of us.

I laugh at the 1 gil undercutters. Its just a "piss-off" type antic to get you to drop the price stupidly low in rage and then someone can come in an swipe it form you at a steal.

Flamds1 is correct, if your gonna undercut, undercut or just stop wasting your time.

I farm/gather most of the stuff i make so all that is lost is time and on a lazy Tuesday evening while waiting for your queses to pop up, it beats just sitting around and doing nothing.

I have no issues undercutting to a break even price, I'll go below cost of mats for HQ if I farmed the mats myself, I don't have much tolerance for people undercutting me. If someone undercuts by 1g, I'll undercut by 100 to 1000. My retainers are constantly full, dead items sitting there cost me more than selling something at cost and I'd rather be crafting than micromanaging the market board.

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Originally Posted by Hitaru

Buying stuff in limsa from a grid retainer will put a fee on ur purchase, while buying from a limsa retainer is a lot cheaper due to no fee even the price tag is 1g higher.

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Yep unless your undercutting the tax your not getting my sale. I often buy the item listed for the city I am in just to avoid tax and or actually make a savings over your undercut. Undercutting just hurts the under-cutter. And does anyone ever consider that people are manipulating the market to obtain cheep items. I have done this list an item for a super low price watch others under cut, then buy out the market use those mats and sell your own later at a price to cover your costs. It works great.

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Originally Posted by gadzi_h

And does anyone ever consider that people are manipulating the market to obtain cheep items. I have done this list an item for a super low price watch others under cut, then buy out the market use those mats and sell your own later at a price to cover your costs. It works great.

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People constantly manipulating price of certain materia.

example: This was sold with 4.5k gil last night when i went to bed.
http://i.imgur.com/4vV3ig4.jpg

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Originally Posted by Gabbelgak

I've had a couple of tells asking me to stop selling things so low.

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Really - how did they found our your character's name from your retainer's names?

EDIT: Well - your's is clearly easy to get but not so much for others (unless using "signed" items indeed)

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Originally Posted by HEC

Really - how did they found our your character's name from your retainer's names?

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When you hover over the the item on the MB you can sometime see who made it. I noticed this when i sell my HQ gear on the MB.

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The BEST way to kill the community - to DICTATE them to how much and when they can('t) post:
The following errors occurred with your submission
New forum post cannot be made due to either you have reached to your daily limit or your main character's level is not high enough.
SE - please do not replace a proper Forum Moderating with weak attemps to "moderate" the forum by putting silly limitations across the whole board! All you'll achieve this way is to turn away members trying to help others or simply chat with others.

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I never new there were limitations to how many posts you can have in a day...I know there is a 1k limit on post size (which is stupid) but not the post count limit

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Originally Posted by waca

People constantly manipulating price of certain materia.

example: This was sold with 4.5k gil last night when i went to bed.

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It's pretty easy to spot these kind of manipulation...but how much gils were they able to make through this? The person in your picture would need to sell at least 12 PietyIII at 20k to break even...and within that 7 hour span, he only managed to sell 3. Manipuilations such as these has a window of time for you to capitalize. The longer it is, the more likely some other players supplying that goods is going to come in and undercut you, which will ruin your play. High population server makes it harder to pull that off.

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Originally Posted by Wazabi

It's pretty easy to spot these kind of manipulation...but how much gils were they able to make through this?
High population server makes it harder to pull that off.

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In my opinion Piety III is not a very good target. (But someone did it anyway)
There are some other materias, I believe some may figured it out, I won't name it here, have greater demand where these manipulators made money from, although I am only assuming they are making money since they have been doing this for a while.

Yojimbo is a relative low population server, I don't know how to summarize up our market habitat in a few lines, but I hope Wind shards sell at 44 gil, Lightning 40 gil (lowest price/bot price) can give you a slightly vague idea.

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Originally Posted by waca

In my opinion Piety III is not a very good target. (But someone did it anyway)
There are some other materias, I believe some may figured it out, I won't name it here, have greater demand where these manipulators made money from, although I am only assuming they are making money since they have been doing this for a while.

Yojimbo is a relative low population server, I don't know how to summarize up our market habitat in a few lines, but I hope Wind shards sell at 44 gil, Lightning 40 gil (lowest price/bot price) can give you a slightly vague idea.

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Yeah, I can paint the market picture in your server.

Free listing and re-pricing would work fine and be a really good thing...

If all currency sinks--repair costs, housing costs, teleportation costs (the big long term one)--would automatically adjust for the current value of gil.

But they don't.

So what does rampant undercutting do? Cause massive deflation and a mismatch in how much players believe gil is worth and how much the game claims it is worth. Square only needs to change the system slightly to stop this (and it will dissuade RMT activity as well, since they are responsible for crashing most of the markets with their gather-bots).

How can Square fix this? Really simple.

1) Charge a brokerage fee when listing the item instead of a single tax when the item sells. This way people will be wary about pricing items too low with the intention of crashing a market.
2) Refund the brokerage fee if the item does not sell, but is not pulled down by the player (when the listing expires). This prevents players from being punished because their item didn't sell.
3) Charge a new brokerage fee every time the player adjusts the price of an item, or takes it down and relists it. This stops undercutting wars--people aren't going to undercut multiple times per day because it'll cost them each time they do it. You get market price stability as a result.
4) Charge the sales tax as per usual, when/if the item sells. Just a currency sink, nothing to see here.

This is no different from what any other auction service in the real world (i.e. eBay) does. If you list your old iPhone on eBay but nobody buys it, eBay still charges you for the listing. Most MMO auction houses also do this--you pay a smaller fee to list the item, and a larger "cut" to the AH when your item sells.

I get your logic on this issue, but that's not exactly how currency works, and definately not how deflation happens, and I can see how the misconception leads you to derive your conclusion. Your proposal won't "fix" things as you've intended (if any, it might crash the market faster). The issue about listing fees and its shortfall and misconception has been discussed here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...taxes.../page2

Rampant undercutting brings the price of an item closer to its equilibrium price, and does not cause deflation. Deflation means general decrease in the price level of all goods, not just some of them. Thus undercutting happens, which reduce the price of an item, simply because there's an abundant of supply and little demand, period. Once it hits equilibrium or near it, undercutting slows down. Just look at the price of items in some heavily populated servers (Tonbery) and compare them to less populated servers (Malboro) and you'll see. If rampant undercutting consistently happens for an item, that simply means that item's price is not at equilibrium yet...otherwise it's just a short term thing.

There is no such thing as undercutting. Undercutting is a term cooked up by someone who thinks the economical world revolves around them. They get upset when someone sets a price lower then theirs. Really?! What do you live under a rock? Look around you the real world, and you will see that selling items lower than the competition is normal. Specially when you tried to set outrageously high prices.

Let me give and example of outrageous. I went to buy a level five trade gear, In the market it's over 1000 Gils, but at the vendors it's a tenth of that. Really?! Really?!!

Supply and demand runs the economy, not some dodo head that tries to set prices with the argument that anything lower ruins the economy. It ruins your little economical world, but not the economy as a whole.

In the real world, people sell their products at a competitive prices and try to sell at a lower price then the competition. Why do you think Wal-Mart is so big? Because they sell at lower prices.

I find the intention of not releasing all furniture recipies before the patch an interesting one as that will be what dictates the price of the market for the foreseeable future. As we do not know the required materials people cannot gather the materials in advance to avoid a massive inflation to the materials that are needed to make the most popular furniture.

As housing land prices gradually decrease the % of the playerbase able to own land to make a house increases allowing a steady market of furniture demand. But the cost of land is a huge tax on the economy further driving down the available gil players have to purchase with.

There is no fix to the economy or undercutting as almost every item is free (minus cost of repairing gear) with unlimited free supply the only real cost is time so items are essentially priced at how much people value their time used to gather the items compared to the standard demand/supply. With a still decent number of gatherer bots the time used to gather materials is almost 0 as nobody is actually playing the game and they can perpetually undercut the item down to almost nothing and then move to another item.