How to Undercut

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

It really really pisses some people off so there is always the possibility I get a good laugh out of someone else's rage. You will then see these people get pissed off and cut by massive amounts out of spite. I'll then buy these and then mark EVERYTHING up to prices well above where they were before so LOL jokes on you.

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Most of us who undercut by 'big amounts' do so purely to get the sale done quickly at reasonable prices. All you're doing here is helping them out by buying it, and I highly doubt you're making them rage too.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

(1) It really really pisses some people off so there is always the possibility I get a good laugh out of someone else's rage. You will then see these people get pissed off and cut by massive amounts out of spite. I'll then buy these and then mark EVERYTHING up to prices well above where they were before so LOL jokes on you.
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Actually the joke is on you. Because I just made money from said item, and I am mid-synth crafting a replacement for that exact item to put it straight back up on the market to compete with you.
Now you have two of the items that you can't get rid of - and one of them cost you market value, while I have just crafted a replacement to make more gil off.

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Originally Posted by Altena

Actually the joke is on you. Because I just made money from said item, and I am mid-synth crafting a replacement for that exact item to put it straight back up on the market to compete with you.
Now you have two of the items that you can't get rid of - and one of them cost you market value.

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Who said anything about market value? I'll keep cutting by 1 gil until you're well below that. Once i'm in profit margin area i'll scoop up everything you have to offer and mark it up or stockpile it to dump when prices get high again. So by all means keep adding more. I'll keep cutting until it becomes unprofitable for you to do so. Then i'll mark everything back up and make my money back 10 fold.

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Originally Posted by Settiesama

Most of us who undercut by 'big amounts' do so purely to get the sale done quickly at reasonable prices. All you're doing here is helping them out by buying it, and I highly doubt you're making them rage too.

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Works for me if it's a win/win. I'm more than willing to give you a lesser sum now for my larger gain down the line once I mark your item back up. Plus even if one item doesn't work out diversifying across multiple areas of the MB will ensure overall profit.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

Who said anything about market value? I'll keep cutting by 1 gil until you're well below that. Once i'm in profit margin area i'll scoop up everything you have to offer and mark it up or stockpile it to dump when prices get high again. So by all means keep adding more. I'll keep cutting until it becomes unprofitable for you to do so. Then i'll mark everything back up and make my money back 10 fold.

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Well that's nice, but while you're there with your collection then to sell, we've made money already thanks to you buying, and got whatever else we wanted, and like Altena said, probably making more to put back up to repeat the cycle leaving you unable to shift anything unless you become willing to comply to selling low.

Didn't take long to show by example why things needs changing.

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Originally Posted by Settiesama

Well that's nice, but while you're there with your collection then to sell, we've made money already thanks to you buying, and got whatever else we wanted, and like Altena said, probably making more to put back up to repeat the cycle leaving you unable to shift anything unless you become willing to comply to selling low.

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That doesn't happen in high turn over items where people buy large quantities frequently. The prices will fluctuate between low and high and if you know where the "average" is on the server once it goes above you dump some of your stock. Buy low and sell high. In larger more expensive items that sell infrequently sure it's likely you won't see profit. But the steady income isn't in those items in the first place. *shrug* Believe me or don't I don't care. Have a good day and thanks for the gil!

I like seeing another person buy something I put up for my "fair price" and relisting it for a much higher price.

I got the gil I wanted, quickly; they get the gil they want, at the cost of seeing the more-expensive listing going unsold for a much longer time - "carrying cost" as it were.

Works for me :)

I just price match. I'm a lazy seller.

Also Undercut sounds like a skill a ninja would use after assassinate.

I was expecting a thread on making better hairstyles, instead it's an angry seller not understanding how markets work.

/disappointed

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

[...] once I mark your item back up. [...]

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I find this back and forth banter of who’s getting one over on who very entertaining, but just wanted to point out that once you buy the item, it is now your item. Until SE adds a system that gives you play by play updates on each transaction of every item you ever sold after you sold it, no one is really incentivized to care beyond “hurray, the item I listed sold”.

Unless the going price is clearly a lot higher or lower, I just use the rule that a fair price is 100 x the vendor sale price for HQ items.

I also really don't understand people who put items on at the vendor price - or under it, in at least one case I came across. Why would you even bother?

I don't undercut at all, I put it up for the same price as the last person and it puts the newest item first so the market doesn't take a hit.

There is inherently nothing wrong with under-cutting.

Driving down the market prices may not be great for the seller, but it is good for the consumer, at least on the short-term.

I mean I get what people are saying, it's nice to make the most potential profit off of a sale as possible, and when someone drives down the price it either forces you do to the same or gamble buying their sales and selling back at your original price. However, people get too upset about it. Like I said, driving down the price of goods isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

Lets find more things to complain about everyday!

On a serious note, I usually just put my stuff low price to sell quickly. If people undercut me thats their profit loss, and maybe someone with not a lot of gil can afford a nice item they want if that happens :)

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Originally Posted by DamianFatale

It seems like a lot of people need a lesson on this.


1. Evaluate the prices.

2. Go 200-500 Gil lower first. Do not just drop it by 10,000 Gil. You do want to make money right?

3. Your thing gets overshadowed by lower prices. No big deal! If everyone priced at lower increments, instead of being desperate, we’d all get similar profits from that item. Unless it becomes more common however. Items demoted to being common will naturally fall in price.

That’s it. It’s simple. Please don’t undercut obnoxiously.

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Not my personal system. I do the following:
(a) Evaluate the price of items listed
(b) Evaluate the price of items sold over the past couple of weeks
(c) Determine a price relative to both that seems fair

Also, a bonus step: if anyone undercuts me by a small amount repeatedly, I'll drop the price to the floor. Because I don't care about individual items, and it pisses me off when I get undercut. I also refuse to price my goods at weird increments; below 10K gil I'll generally go in increments of 500, and above 10k it's increments of 5000. This occasionally causes me to undercut people who have reasonable prices, because 50,796 is just an annoying number to me.

Edit: As an aside, I really despise that SE moved away from FFXI's price-blind system. It's contributed to tremendously erratic markets, ones that are prone to wild price swings in the space of hours or days. I'd welcome a bit more stability.

proper pricing would be twice what vendors sell to the masses for. undercutting is no longer a problem then. to do otherwise would indicate low moral integrity and weak character.

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Originally Posted by Jamyl_Sarum

proper pricing would be twice what vendors sell to the masses for. undercutting is no longer a problem then. to do otherwise would indicate low moral integrity and weak character.

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Wait, so it's proper to get undercut 50% by the vendors?

What business school did you go to?

No no no you sell on market board for what ever npc pay for it. How else would npc get by when your not logged on.

No I will continue to undercut by whatever amount I want. I love the tears of my enemy. "You killed my market omg."

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Originally Posted by Altena

What's the point of undercutting by 500 gil?
The point of undercutting is not only to be the lowest on the market, but to convince people that they're better off teleporting to the town your item is listed in to buy the item. Teleports cost more than 500gil a lot of the times.. Lol...

5-10k is a nicer amount. Hell, on big ticket items you can drop it by much more than that and not make a dint in it.

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Yeah, I always cover the teleport(usually 1k), lost way too many sales prior to doing that, from savvy customers.
But as has been stated plenty already in the thread, do as you want. :)

You don't pay my sub.

I miss the old XI system of showing what people paid for an item but not what the ones on the board were selling for.

Just another case of #XIdiditbetter

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Originally Posted by Enla

/That/ befuddles me, especially with furniture and the like. At least sell it for a mild profit, even if it's just 100 gil.

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When this happens and stuff is lower than the resale price (thank you undercut wars) I like to buy and sell to a vendor for profit =^ω^=

I think majority of players undercut by 1-10k, or when we really undercut its because we want to sell it fast. That is it really... don’t get when ppl get upset with the market board, it all comes to demand-supply. If an item exists in low supply but its demand is high, then ofc the price will be high.. and vice-versa. You will see little fluctuations here and there but that is it... don’t get mad, embrace it, be patient ;)

There is no problem with how selling works in this game. If you don't want to compete with other sellers then find another product to sell. There are thousands of them.

undercut like hell and buy it cheap and relist. Simple economics.

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Originally Posted by Altena

What's the point of undercutting by 500 gil?
The point of undercutting is not only to be the lowest on the market, but to convince people that they're better off teleporting to the town your item is listed in to buy the item. Teleports cost more than 500gil a lot of the times.. Lol...

5-10k is a nicer amount. Hell, on big ticket items you can drop it by much more than that and not make a dint in it.

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implying the general population pays attention to that

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Originally Posted by Jib

I think majority of players undercut by 1-10k, or when we really undercut its because we want to sell it fast. That is it really... don’t get when ppl get upset with the market board, it all comes to demand-supply. If an item exists in low supply but its demand is high, then ofc the price will be high.. and vice-versa. You will see little fluctuations here and there but that is it... don’t get mad, embrace it, be patient ;)

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because it doesn't work after a point. Unless it is so low like forgetting a digit where it is glaring obvious it is good resell drop, people will not buy it.

zero people want something, so it doesn't matter if it is 1k or 100k, it wont sell. Because this game hands you everything, there is nothing that is really stable. This game is really weird, the price variance has huge gaps even if you compare weekdays vs weekends or first week after patch vs a month or 2 later. Now I get huge price gaps with new items, but not with items that are patches old and not related to housing. There is something really wrong with the economic system to see that happening, but I am not exactly sure how to fix it or why that happens, other then making a system like FFXI or RS that put stuff in place to be anti-undercut spam every second.

In FFXI things fell and raise with inflation (SLOWLY) but nothing comes close to the degree it happens in ffxiv. I also think the undercutting spam FFXIV has, has time wasting issues. Like for the example I had with the people undercutting each other for 1 hour. TWO people achieved NOTHING, wasted ONE HOUR of time ... for what? I wonder if the development team records how much time people spend on changing prices, I think it shold be considered changing the system if too many people are wasting time on it.

Moogle server with Coke was fun last week. 4k for 1 piece and I was gaining easy gil without doing anything. Till ofcourse the masses discover it and began the undercut wars. Which I dont mind , grab the coke from the board and keep it for some another time.

You can complain and cry a river. But why not turn it in your favor ? Buy low and sell high.

how to undercut ?
simple , put your items at 60% of the lowest price , you want to make money fast , dont you ?

and when a little clown puts something 1gil lower than me i undercut my own price by half

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

I miss the old XI system of showing what people paid for an item but not what the ones on the board were selling for.

Just another case of #XIdiditbetter

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Hate to say it, even that system had its weaknesses. Undercutting was very active as ppl wanted to move stuff. At any point in time you could unlist and relist at lower prices if someone undercut.

Also it was horrible for the consumer, you had to guess bid until you met the lowest listed price. Unless you were lazy or didn't care it created stale market. Gil also had more weight and power to it in XI. In XIV, not so much as you can acquire things much faster and easier without gil.

Who cares about the gil? I just wanna undercut a bish!

Oh, the thrill of frantically gathering mats and crafting up some punishment to throw on the board and undercut your opponents.

Of seeing the sales banner in the middle of a gathering run and breaking that moefoe off to craft a replacement as immediately as possible.

Or of a real-time undercutting war that starts at 10am and doesn't end until 5am the next morning and you win, give up, are forced out of combat because of RL, or just fall asleep. (Falling asleep is an L, btw)

The rush, my brothers, I said the RUSH of seeing items of high value plummet to the floor screaming and bounce like a dead cat. _That_ is the payment I desire: the entertainment of war! Of a battle well-fought. The gil just ensures I can keep putting more quarters into the arcade.

Death to all prices! Long live the marketboard!

I made around 4 mln gil on playing with the losers, who were undercuting the glamour dispellers. :^)

Manipulated the price with undercut wars so hard it made to lowest profit, and then bought it all and got everything back and release it on in packs of 5 for 9k each inflating the price of them to the sky. At this point i was unstoppable, i was able to buy any undercut dispeller i wanted to maintain my high price.
Undercut more my brothers and sisters, so the real sharks could do their job, hehehehe.

I will do it with the craftable glamour items too, call me evil, your undercut = my profit <hands rub>

Just leave things be. You know there are starving PhD candidates in Economics, who are probably getting their doctorate studying our market :)

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

I made around 4 mln gil on playing with the losers, who were undercuting the glamour dispellers. :^)

Manipulated the price with undercut wars so hard it made to lowest profit, and then bought it all and got everything back and release it on in packs of 5 for 9k each inflating the price of them to the sky. At this point i was unstoppable, i was able to buy any undercut dispeller i wanted to maintain my high price.
Undercut more my brothers and sisters, so the real sharks could do their job, hehehehe.

I will do it with the craftable glamour items too, call me evil, your undercut = my profit <hands rub>

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I fail how that punishes them... They'll just make more and sell, while you buy theirs to put back on the board for a higher price. A smart seller would just flood you knowing you'd pay anyways. But hey, that's just me.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

I fail how that punishes them... They'll just make more and sell, while you buy theirs to put back on the board for a higher price. A smart seller would just flood you knowing you'd pay anyways. But hey, that's just me.

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They will make more, i will buy it, they will do more, i will buy it and sell it lower, they will do more, i will buy it and put it lower.

Then i buy entire market for that one item, making it a waste of time for those who made them and start dictating the price myself.
When i get to the certain margin of profit, the cost i spend before doesnt matter and i could keep making money and buy whatever stuff is on the market lower than me.
Something like that, its not simple, but effective.

I made is so hardcore in ESO with food and drinks i end up with 500 kk on one char, hehehe.

Given how many items on my server are selling for less than it costs to make them, it seems a number of crafters on said server could do with some basic math and economic lessons.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

Given how many items on my server are selling for less than it costs to make them, it seems a number of crafters on said server could do with some basic math and economic lessons.

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Gotta get that crafting log done.

Here the fix:
Bring back retainer wards 1.0

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Originally Posted by ReplicaX

Hate to say it, even that system had its weaknesses. Undercutting was very active as ppl wanted to move stuff. At any point in time you could unlist and relist at lower prices if someone undercut.

Also it was horrible for the consumer, you had to guess bid until you met the lowest listed price. Unless you were lazy or didn't care it created stale market. Gil also had more weight and power to it in XI. In XIV, not so much as you can acquire things much faster and easier without gil.

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Honestly I usually only tended to drop the standard sale price by a few hundred, or in the case of large ticket items, a few thousand, and things were constantly selling. Rarely did I have to change a price or have something on the market for 3 months before it moves. It's primary weakness imo is that you could only put 7 items on the market per char at a time.

And when it came to buying, if you bid in smart increments instead of clutching your purse strings you only really had to bid a handful of times and could still save a ton of gil.

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Originally Posted by urban

Here the fix:
Bring back retainer wards 1.0

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omg I still have nightmares about the v1 retainer wards. Every time they play that tune in the game it gives me shivers