The Market Board makes me sad.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

There are FCs/LS(s) which coordinate market segment takeovers and monopolies.

I think many of the gathering market segments are plagued by gathering bots/bot farms.

Even if they sell stuff at 1 gil each, it's profit for them.And since, it's not profitable for human players to compete directly with bots/bot farms, there are plenty of market segments which are basically bot monopolies competing with each other.

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Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

I personally like when people crash the market. More goodies for less for me. Plus I've been guilty of listing things half of what the last lister is selling for just to sell it quick. It works and it's usually sold within the day. But then again, I also have so much gil from just selling drops that it really doesn't bother me much.

This thread is hilarious. The irony is awesome.

What we have here is capitalism in two forms, the US(ish) system and the EU(ish) system. What OP wants is a European Union system. What OP is getting is the US system.

How much is your time worth? Time is the only cost in this game that is tangible. You don't physically put anything in, you never get your Sub back, so time is the only factor. (Googling a node and clicking 7 times is not effort by any real standard)

What OP is pissed off about is he believes crafters should be able to ask a set price and pulling the bottom out from it should not happen (or maybe be illegal) that's very European union of you. What is happening is people are playing china, rock bottom prices , supply and demand and price to sell.

Just like with capitalism, you ethire match it or get forced out of the market. Sqeen is not going to set prices for items or create any kinds of "limits" on how much people can sell certain quality items for.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

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It's impossible to get rid of bots. Like cockroaches, they keep coming back with new accounts after banned. Even hardware banning is not effective as there's ways around that. It's impossible to really ban people from services on the internet unless it's stuff like YouTube and their entire channel revolves around their real self on videos.

its an competitive market. COMPETE

not every player is going to go down by 1 gil like a mook.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

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There are tons of DoL/H bots around. The former aren't difficult to identify if you pay attention to their movement patterns and note how they're able to follow the exact same path between the gathering nodes consistently with no deviation whatsoever. You'll see them forming conga lines if there are multiple bots in the same zone. They also tend to either only show up in the dead hours of the morning or literally do nothing but gather 24/7.

It is bannable, but SE seldom bans them (Which is evident from their weekly illicit activity reports), and even when they do get banned it's rarely a permaban.

I've been reporting a trio of DoL/H bots that have been active since I started playing in late HW and they're still going strong even as I type this message.

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Originally Posted by supergiz

It's impossible to get rid of bots. Like cockroaches, they keep coming back with new accounts after banned. Even hardware banning is not effective as there's ways around that. It's impossible to really ban people from services on the internet unless it's stuff like YouTube and their entire channel revolves around their real self on videos.

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The types of bots at work here are not like the gil farmers who can be immediately replaced if they get banned.

These are characters that needed to be leveled all the way to 70 on a DoW/M class, then max out their DoL and/or DoH classes to start their farming.

If the STF actually did their job properly they could be easily kept under control, but...

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Originally Posted by Gariored

its an competitive market. COMPETE

not every player going to go down by 1 gil like a mook.

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You can't compete with bots who effectively have an infinite amount of time to invest into crafting/gathering and basically only care about how fast their stuff sells.

If a item has 10 entries listed for 1mil ... it costs 200k to make it and it has not sold for a while ... im not going to undercut you by 1 gil but 400k.

Which will trigger a sale (hopefully) and then list another for 600k.

You dont ruin the market ... just becauce a item is listed for x doesn't mean it worth it.

Item value + profit in %
Or calculate how much an hour of farming is worth to you.

The market boards will have to adjust to the lowest value in the long run they will all align.

But please dont expect ppl to play the stupid "waaah you ruin the price if you dont undercut by one gil"

If i see a price like 1.999.999 and one for 2mil ... ill buy for 2 mil. Adjust your price in a meaningful way or wait in line.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

You can't compete with bots who effectively have an infinite amount of time to invest into crafting/gathering and basically only care about how fast their stuff sells.

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you're giving bots waaay to much credit, players buying crafting/gathering items from NPCs and reselling it are a bigger issue than any bot.

but it sounds like you need to jump to more unique items instead of trying to sell basic things ANY yahoo can obtain.


(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

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Originally Posted by Gariored

you're giving bots waaay to much credit, players buying crafting/gathering items from NPCs and reselling it are a bigger issue than any bot.

but it sounds like you need to jump to more unique items instead of trying to sell basic things ANY yahoo can obtain.

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No, she's not. Real problem is: you don't know what you are talking about. Regular players botting and then selling high-end stuff are nothing new.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

It's not about making gold "easily". Easy money is what you get. What you do when you do what you do is tank the market for people who actually put in effort and hard work. We are always looking towards the future. Gil may be worthless to you now but what will you do when gil is actually worth something. Try and sell on the market? You tanked it so it's just gonna take you longer to get what you want just because of what you did in the past.

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Someone gets lucky and gets a rare, high selling item from a quick exploration and puts the item on the marketboard for 1million gil
Another person gathers the materials and crafts the same high selling item, sells it for 400k gil because it's all profit and they are happy for a quick sale. Maybe they are 350k away from buying a house or it pays for a glam they like. Are they in the wrong for doing this, because this thread topic would suggest so, even though they put in the effort to get the item themselves with the clear intention to sell on.

People can sell their items for what they want, there is no honour or integrity on the marketboard, the fact people undercut by less than the tax cost supports this.

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Originally Posted by Gariored

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

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Have you ever watched gather bots in action? They are very easy to spot. They post stacks and stacks and stacks of content for next to nothing. They kill markets for high end timed nodes including aethersands and more. Please don't poo poo the effect these losers have upon the market and the negating of the effort real people put in to gather those items.

It would be nice if SE took a much more active roll in banning them and their fake FC's. They get reported endlessly and still are there.

If someone is doing what OP suggested it's either because it's a Glam item and Quality doesn't matter or they are just engaged in bidding wars to try and get a quick sale.

I'd be interested to see the effects if the tax had to be paid by the seller to list...

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Originally Posted by Gariored

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

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I honestly almost never see bots gathering basic mats except for personal use.

They're generally either farming ephermal nodes for aethersands (Which are most often being funneled to an infusion spam bot as opposed to being sold on the MB), farming enemies for material drops, or farming unspoiled nodes for scrips.

Also, I'm not trying to sell "basic" things. I want/try to push sales of the latest gear/consumables but those markets have basically been completely taken over by bots on my server, with three omnicrafters in a constant price war and a single infusion spammer who constantly floods the market with them faster then they actually sell (They basically have an infinite supply of mats between their personal DoL bots and ones owned by friends/associates).

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Originally Posted by Dfess

Don't crash the market just because you want to "sell it faster and get it out of your inventory".

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Not to be rude, but no.

Also on topic, for the HQ material prices, the only purpose HQ serves a lot of the time is for low level crafters, most of which are focused on leveling anyway rather than making HQ low level items in bulk. A while back I converted every material I own to NQ to save on retainer space. I can make almost anything in the game from NQ mats, thus HQ serves no purpose. If I'm buying materials, I ignore quality, so if someone has listed their HQ materials at twice the price, I'm not a potential buyer. I imagine it's the same for most others. Therefore low demand has driven HQ material prices down.

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Originally Posted by Gariored

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

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To be fair, it's not always bots, but they are an issue. They're the reason food and potion markets are an absolute waste of time. They also attacked the high-end gear market for a month or two and literally flooded it with several thousand pieces of gear. I'm unsure if Enix dealt with them or it just isn't profitable enough for them this late in the expansion.

People's need to sell things fast is caused by the item cap on retainers. People who don't like low prices can remove the offending items from the market by buying them.

I have been making my way through the AAR crafting log and getting rid of any mastercraft materials. I've been pricing a lot of things low because I just need to get rid of it to make room for the expansion. There's probably plenty of people mass selling stuff just to get rid of it right now.

I think it's actually good sign there is still a free market / economy going on.
I wonder if you also are sad when your local grocery store reduces the prices...

Depends on what is being listed. Some listings on the MB are way over priced, even for Normal quality. Some of those HQs who are lower price might be closer to average or what the sales history says.

Beyond that, yeah, sometimes people undercut for quicker sales. Theyre not interested in maximizing profit, only making a profit. Having to list an item then slowly cut it down on price due to people undercutting you for 1 gil is annoying at times.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Undercutting is predictable.

A successful merchant will manipulate the undercutters to her advantage.

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Since I aren't doing it to make much gil (but want a player to get a hold of it, whether they use it to resell for profit, or for their own personal use, IDC), by doing that you're actually playing right into my hands. I will go for 75-90% undercuts quite regularly, just to get those merchants to try and buy the item off me (so that it's in a players hands other than mine). Sometimes though I also work the other way (if I see stuff being sold for less than vendor sale cost, I'll buy it up - using aetheryte tickets for free teleports as needed, since I have a steady supply of seals for the tickets - and then vendor it). I also always look for what citystates have the lowest selling tax and go from there (so I'm almost always selling in the Ishgard markets)

"Capitalism Ho"

But on a serious note , I will sell my wares at what price I want .
And the fastest way for me to really drop my price is to be silly and lower the price by 1 gill.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

Stop crashing the market.

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Gonna give you a simple answer: NO

Stop competing with people if you don't want to lose money.
That's all that needs to happen.
The more people that compete with me, or anyone who thinks like me, the more the item drops in the non-profit zone.

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

I think it's actually good sign there is still a free market / economy going on.
I wonder if you also are sad when your local grocery store reduces the prices...

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AH yes, I love making stuff and then going to my local grocery store to sell it, thats totally a normal thing people do.

This is what I love about a player driven economy. Not prices dictated by a game company.

I admit, I sell stuff lower then others. But for different reasons. Seeing a level 1 gathering belt go for 50k boggles my mind. Or level 15 armor from a dungeon? 40k+. Like people forget there are new players and not just vets with gil out the butt.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

This is what I love about a player driven economy. Not prices dictated by a game company.

I admit, I sell stuff lower then others. But for different reasons. Seeing a level 1 gathering belt go for 50k boggles my mind. Or level 15 armor from a dungeon? 40k+. Like people forget there are new players and not just vets with gil out the butt.

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Yea thats fair, its why I try to price fair when I did it because I remember being low lvl and how much gil sucked, especially lvling crafters.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

This is what I love about a player driven economy. Not prices dictated by a game company.

I admit, I sell stuff lower then others. But for different reasons. Seeing a level 1 gathering belt go for 50k boggles my mind. Or level 15 armor from a dungeon? 40k+. Like people forget there are new players and not just vets with gil out the butt.

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Mogboard is a good tool to see the price things should be set at in these cases. Usually end up setting my prices a few thousand gil under the lowest mogboard price, as that tends to get things selling quicker, and the mogboard price is usually a good representation at what the items should be set at when selling them.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

A quick buck isn't the best way to get rich. All you do is slow the rate at which everyone gets rich wich lowers your rate of getting rich even more.

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A lot of people likely dump junk from their inventory onto the Market Board just to free up inventory space. They don't care about maximizing it's worth. Selling it is just better than trashing it. They sell it at the lowest price to get rid of it.

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Originally Posted by Yllania

AH yes, I love making stuff and then going to my local grocery store to sell it, thats totally a normal thing people do.

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Well, it is for the farmers, who sell their goods to the grocery store, if albeit indirectly.

The analogy may have been a stretch, but it is by no means invalid.

Its interesting to see that some players don't realize that this game is mostly a buyer's market rather than a seller's market. Outside of newly released items, production often far outstrips demand.

What I find really sad is when people sell items cheaper then they can sell them to NPCs, especially with the Doman Enclave giving you 120-200% the price (granted, you can only get 25,000-40,000 gil a week).

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

So there might be some people clueless about the market,don't care as long as they make a small profit quickly(low profit margins but high volume of sales),as long their item sells,bots, etc.

However, do consider that some people deliberately crash market segments for long-term profits. It's a player driven free market after all.

Some sellers have deep pockets and they're willing to sell items at a loss, if it forces some of the competition out of that market segment. Once some of the competetion has been 'eliminated', they can dominate that market segment and raise prices.

Fortunately, world visit has broken up a lot of such monopolies but it still does happen.

Another example; when I want cheap X crafting mats, I'd do something like throw up my own stock of X crafting mats onto the market board, at a price which is still profitable for me but enough for the undercutters to begin a downwards spiral of undercutting.

When the mats reach a low enough price according to me, I buy them all out.

Undercutting is predictable.

A successful merchant will manipulate the undercutters to her advantage.

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This was really well said and put a smile on my face. MB is its very own game and seems very few really understand behind the scenes.

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Originally Posted by Dfess

A quick buck isn't the best way to get rich. All you do is slow the rate at which everyone gets rich wich lowers your rate of getting rich even more.

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When you move through hundreds or thousands of items a day, that extra couple K (if that) you could possibly maybe make if it sells fast is less good than being sure it's going to sell fast.

I've had to stop AH'ing things that go for less than whatever my days threshold is, because it's more profitable to just vendor them.

I vendored 30 corsages the other day (silly glowy mainhands) because they sell 1 or 2 a month for 10k. Not worth retainer space, ever.


The things that upset me about the AH generally come down to it being godawful. I'll never be satisfied until we get GW2's auction house system (or an upgrade to that) in every game though.

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Originally Posted by Yllania

Ive bought almost a full stock of something before but I have that eureka money. I will admit it is pretty annoying when and HQ item is selling less than selling the regular item to an npc. Youre just losing money at that point, why do it.

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You got to be careful doing that. I've done it a couple times just to see what happened and the first two times I did really well but almost lost money the third. Bought every HQ infusion on the market then resold them and doubled what I spent. Figured out you got to time it right and only do it to stuff that is selling super fast. Worked the first two times because that was right around the times new raids were released. The third wasn't so people had a chance to make more and start undercutting.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'd like the market board if I could sell on a different server because Cactuar's economy is pure trash due to there being multiple omnicrafter bots constantly spamming the market with gear and consumables.

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Sargatanas has this problem too last time I checked :(

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Since I aren't doing it to make much gil (but want a player to get a hold of it, whether they use it to resell for profit, or for their own personal use, IDC), by doing that you're actually playing right into my hands. I will go for 75-90% undercuts quite regularly, just to get those merchants to try and buy the item off me (so that it's in a players hands other than mine). Sometimes though I also work the other way (if I see stuff being sold for less than vendor sale cost, I'll buy it up - using aetheryte tickets for free teleports as needed, since I have a steady supply of seals for the tickets - and then vendor it).

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Yup, there are many times when inventory space is more valuable than items. So the opportunity cost of storing certain items must be weighed against having free inventory space for potentially,higher profit items.

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I also always look for what citystates have the lowest selling tax and go from there (so I'm almost always selling in the Ishgard markets)

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I used to sell from Ishgard, since it's possible to have 0% sales tax. However,with World Visit, I've been selling from Limsa because, I find that I get more sales from Limsa compared to Ishgard. Also, I can charge a little higher for stuff compared to the other cities and people still buy my stuff because of the convenience of buying from Limsa.

For me,the loss of profit due to sales tax is made up by the volume of sales.

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Originally Posted by NumenarMithrandir

MB is its very own game and seems very few really understand behind the scenes.

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I find Market Board PVP very fun because you get to observe parallels to IRL stock markets. Also, there's a lot of psychological/sociological principles which can be observed as well.

Fortunately, unlike real life you can't become bankrupt. :D

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

I find Market Board PVP very fun because you get to observe parallels to IRL stock markets. Also, there's a lot of psychological/sociological principles which can be observed as well.

Fortunately, unlike real life you can't become bankrupt. :D

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It's just unfortunate that while actual PvP bots are dumb as dirt, there's not much you can do to compete with a MB bot, especially if they're using undercut bots.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It's just unfortunate that while actual PvP bots are dumb as dirt, there's not much you can do to compete with a MB bot, especially if they're using undercut bots.

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Yup, bots do reduce the fun for people who enjoy playing the Market Board.

But I'm not confident that SE cares enough about botting. Especially, considering the bots are subbed accounts.

Secondly, my general impression is that, those of us who enjoy crafting/gathering/playing the Market Board are a minority.

Others and myself have reported bots, especially gathering bots, who gather 24/7 for months/years and...nada

Perhaps,if some combat related content had been limited by botting, SE would care more.