greed is good, it leads to everyone getting more of what they actually want
Garnet rings should be worth less than the cost of a raw garnet on the market. The value of it has already been spent elsewhere. Garnet rings are a SP grind material, not a desired finished product. As such, it's unreasonable to expect them to hold any economic weight.
I sell NQ T2 rings on the street for NPC selling price, and if I don't get any takers they go to NPC. That's what they're worth. 5k.
A garnet ring is a waste of a sales slot. That's why people put them up for nothing. They just want them GONE because they have more to grind out.
People who whine about undercutters are players who insisited on killing FFXI mobs for 300 sp every 4 minutes instead of crushing mobs for 150 sp every 50 seconds simply because the first number is bigger.
It's about SP per hour. It's about gil per day. I sold a +1 heavy crowsbeak hammer, the endgame blacksmith hammer, for 500k. Took 3 weeks on the market for a new crafter to level into it. That's not efficient. Only reason I still do it is because it's garbage to me and I was going for a +2 or 3 for myself.
You can sell a pair of garnet rings a week at what you think you deserve, or you can sell a dozen a week at ridiculously low prices. Only reason a R50 goldsmither is even still making T2 rings is to play the futures HQ market, and in that case even more reason that NQ rings should be worth nothing in this market.
Crafters can't sit there and expect to compete with a guy grinding on garnet rings for his last two levels of goldsmithing. Don't pick fights you can never win.
Each craft has different grinding synths. So your example may hold weight for goldsmiths, but not really anyone else.
And to the person who said making gil is easy if you just farm all the mats and make everything from scratch... as an armorer that is actually a huge waste of time and elemental shards. Yes, I could gather up everything needed for a haubergeon and then craft ingots >> wire >> rings until I have enough rings, then turn those rings into sheets, then switch to weaver and synth the cloth (after I gather the cotton bols and turn them into thread, of course, since we're being thrifty!) then switch to leatherworker and turn a farmed dodo skin into leather, then into leather straps, and finally synth the entire thing... only to be undercut by 5,000 gil as soon as I put the finished product up.
It's funny because, on another forum not long ago, people were complaining that crafters aren't making and selling enough gear. Want to know why? Because it is not worth my time and my materials to craft a bunch of armor to sell at below cost just so some random person can have a cheap piece of gear. I'll gladly craft for people on request, but the market system as-is does not make any sense, and certainly isn't a good investment of game time.
People don't undercut out of the goodness of their hearts--they undercut so they can get theirs sold first. Most crafters aren't trying to be greedy about their prices s, they're trying to make it worth their time.
As for market stalls, those things are awesome in design, and really bring a lot of life to the wards if they are used. Sadly, they aren't, because why should we? It costs extra money just to put up our stuff in a stall that will only be around for 24 hours, and it's not like it draws any greater attention to our goods since people simply use the search system and hunt for the pink stars.
It would be nice if S-E figured out a way to reward people for using the stalls. It would also be nice if people actually took pride in the stuff they crafted and stopped undercutting their fellow crafters just to make a quick buck. If you want it out of your inventory so badly, NPC the junk and leave the market to the people who actually care.
that's why in this game it pays to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. in other words you are more valuable and make tons more gil if you have multiple r30's before going and specializing in a class. i waited until i got all crafts to30 before attempting to cap one. sure it is expensive and time consuming, but i make millions a week when i even have the urge to craft and put items in my bazaar. quite frankly, once you get over 20 million all of my crafting has been to toss to people and rarely selling anything. you're more likely to see me toss any item in game than you are to see me sell one.
Not how the world works. You don't get 15 bucks an hour for washing dishes, whether you care and are passionate about it or not. You honestly don't deserve to make a profit off haubies if you buy the materials off the market and just mash them together. Anyone can do that. NQs should always be sold at a loss.
You're figuring that you, the crafter, is worth way more than you actually are. The materials are worth more than you are. That's why your final product is worth less than the starting materials--because you've spent a chunk of their worth and generated a product that doesn't recoup that loss of value.
Caring has nothing to do with it. Undercutters are doing this game a service. Selling things for what they're worth instead of trying to be wannabe OPEC members.
Again, "The immigrants are taking our jobs" doesn't even fly in the real world. Much less so in a MMO.
But you aren't going to sell it faster by undercutting me because I'm going to come along and undercut you and camp the wards with my alt waiting for you to come back. If you list it at the same price then you'll have a chance at selling some and average as many sales as me rather than forcing me to take every sale infront of you through your rude behaviour. I never undercut someone who lists something the same price as me, even if it puts their name above mine. If you've only got a few of an item and I've got a stack and you just want rid of it because it's not your market that's cool with me too. People will pay the extra for convenience if they want more than a few.
You have a point about T2 rings, however I don't value them all equally. Garnet and Amethyst rings have always held a lot more value than the other four. I wouldn't even waste my time making the others unless someone wanted one. I almost skilled up on them too but due to the cost of electrum I decided silver franciscas was better. Still surprised you aren't doing them. Red coral breastpin is a good alternative too which I didn't know about back then. But yeah I have NPCed Heliodor and Peridot rings in my time as well.
Believe it or not but Garnet and Amethyst rings still sell reasonable well for 50-70k in the wards while HQs can get you 300k. That's why I still make them. HQ rate isn't too terrible. But they're just a filler slot on my retainers because I had nothing else to put there. Those two rings aren't the trash you make them out to be lol. I don't think it's people skilling up on them trying to list them in the wards because I don't see the market flood you'd expect.
The majority of people mine Halatali for gold which results in Heliodor rings or Iron Lake for iron which results in Aquamarine rings. Peridots have always been worthless. Very few people decide to mine up in Dragonhead and Treespeak isn't common due to the problems with the goblin NM so Amethyst, Garnet and to some extent Goshenite rings have held some value. There's often times when there's none of those rings in the wards. That's when I come along. Others have caught on now however so I'll be going back out of that market. Got to be opportunistic with these things.
The problem here is that this is a good idea for sellers, but a terrible idea for buyers... When I think about wanting to SELL things, I like this idea...but when I think about wanting to BUY things, I hate it. See the dilemma here?
There are always amethyst and garnet raws on the market. Ripping and flipping doesn't really deserve very much profit at all. Again, NQ amethyst and garnet rings should be worth less than the cost of a raw amethyst and garnet. If the market were adequately supplied and perfused, they would be. Only by taking advantage of imperfusion, vanity, or stupidity can you turn a profit on the profitless.
Honestly people trying to scrounge as much as they can should thank undercutters. For every one product they figure is actually worth the time it takes to sell it, there are ten that they don't and they're the reason you can essentially treat most gear like a consumable as you level what you want. If everyone were penny pinchers, everything would be annoyingly priced instead of priced to move. I want rank 30 **** priced to move.
Price gougers just care too much about money, so they call everyone else undercutters.
If I intend to sell a lance I've outgrown, and there are 4 of them on the market at 170-200k, I'm putting mine up for 130k. No offense, but I don't give a ****. It's called a USED lance. I'm not bothering with you or it any more. I want it out of my inventory and gone to the very next lance buyer. I don't care if that's "your" market. For that one lance, it's mine.
I find it sad that so many are adamant about profit. You'd think since a game isn't real life, that people would be at least somewhat less concerned about money and wealth, especially since there really isn't even anything worth buying yet. I also don't see why so many have to view crafter jobs as a "merchant" job. I see it as more of a support or service job myself.
I don't sell items too often, but when I do, I do it to distribute my items to people who need them. Gil is of no concern to me so I have no problem selling a full set of gear for a gil per piece as long as the items get to someone who needs them. I imagine I will continue doing so until there's a Salvation Army donation box set up in the cities.
Because 4 lances sitting on the market indicates that the price is too high. Maybe there are two lancers out there who see that lance for 170k and think **** that I'll just level 2 levels with the lance I have and skip it. Maybe @ 130k they'll finally bite. I don't know and I don't care. 130k is the same as 169k to me. I have no interest in playing the lance market for as much as it's worth. It's worth chickenscratch to me.
If you put it up for 169k, xenor's going to put it up for 168k. So I just skip you both and raise you a straight ridiculous number. If you want to play price wars on piddle lances, fine by me. It's not a bluff. My hand just can't be beaten. I'll put it up for 80 the next time. Then 50.
I do. Not. Care. And you can't blame me.
That isn't what I said, nor does it have anything to do with my point.Quote:
Again, "The immigrants are taking our jobs" doesn't even fly in the real world. Much less so in a MMO.
Bottom line, putting something up for a fair price is not price gouging. It's putting something up for a fair price. This goes far beyond one goldsmith undercutting everyone else just to clear out their bags.
Personally, I'd like to see permanent degradation on items that are being resold (like a used lance, for instance), so that they are less useful than a brand new one and therefore worthy of a lower price on the market. Currently, there is no difference between a used lance and a brand new one, and therefore no way a buyer could tell the difference between a used one selling for less and a new one that a crafter just put time and materials into. We wouldn't want greedy price-cutters to reap all the benefits of someone else's work, now would we?
Also Darkstar -- for sure. The majority of the stuff I craft and sell right now is mid-range weaving and leatherworking items. I make enough on those to continue to fund my armorsmith grinding to 50.
We're getting far, far off the point of the OP, though, and I'd hate to see the trolls win. Oscillate has valid points and I'm curious to see how the development team responds to them, and what they have planned for a (hopefully) real and working market system in the future.
They're priced as they are because it's a pain in the ass to go out and get Amethyst and Garnet gems when you could be out mining valuable gold at Halatali. This increases their value. The supply of those gems in the wards is lower than the other T2 gems so they tend to be priced higher when they are on sale, this means people aren't likely to skill up on them.
If we used the kind of logic you're using then all NQ items would cost less than the total cost of materials. Problem is items reach a value where no one bothers to make them because they aren't worth the bazaar space or the effort of synthing it. For Garnet and Amethyst rings I place this at 50. If the price drops below that I stop making and move on to something better. If the price drops lower then others stop making them and you end up with none up for sale.
Ok your lance. What if people come along and list those four at 100k? You have to go even lower which means you're getting at least 70k less than you could have. Then they go lower than you again etc. You're better off NPCing it if you don't care about the gil to save yourself the trouble. Back when we had that undercutting issue with electrum ring +1s I ended up giving them to LS members because it wasn't worth the effort any more.
Lol it's exactly what you meant. The immigrants are taking your jobs and doing what you do for less.
How much do you pay for a market raw garnet and amethyst? 12k? Come on. Ripping and flipping simple rings for at elast a 40k profit for NQ and 340k profit for a lousy, pointless +1 is making out like a bandit.
If there's someone willing to put that lance up for 100k, more power to them. I'm tired of seeing gougers waste their and my time by running bazaars that aren't worth anyone's time.
Electrum ring+1s are ****. Garbage. You didn't stand a chance. You never will in worthless pieces like those and rings. They're grinding materials. Who are you kidding trying to sell them for 80k? I made so many that not only did I give them away to people I knew, but I made more than sold on the market. There will always be someone grinding on those.
You all want paid unreasonable wages. Why that is, I don't know. Doesn't really matter. Not gonna happen. They have you by the balls. They're an undercutter to you, you're a price gouger to them...and honestly you either play by their rules or you quit.
Undercutting is reasonable. It's the people who think their products are worth more than they actually are who are unreasonable.
I don't give a damn what you make selling lances to lowbies "because it's a pain to gather the mats." This lance is moving, because it's not a pain to buy a used hand me down.
There's nothing shady about their business. There is something shady about your 40% marked-up crap though. About all you're arguing is that you deserve more profit for the same gear...because you made it and that apparently means its worth more than the market says it is.
Unless you're a celebrity that's not going to work.
if people are willing to pay it
let them
if people dont pay the overly inflated prices, then the prices will go down
so do we blame the sellers? or the people who buy it for rediculous prices
its this "i want it now" attitude that lets us sellers get away with it, why not earn the most for what we do?
And I'm not going to bother negotiating with you as an iron lance maker because I have better things to do than to keep checking the bazaar to see how you react, hustle, and ball. Your product is just as good used as it is new. It's a midlevel piddlydink piece of gear. It's not worth 170k. It's not worth 130k.
It's a used lance. It's worth whatever I say it is. I don't care what you think yours are worth, and I'm not going to waste my time considering your bazaar sales rates.
130k tonight is worth more than 155k after three price resets five days from now. You're not worth my time to negotiate fair market price with, and I don't care what happens to that market. That's why I undercut you.
Stop whining. Call my bluff and buy my lance, then put it back up for 170k if you think you're right.
You're wrong, which is why you just complain.
This is a yard sale, fellas. You seem to think you run a retail store. Ten dollar toaster? Try a dollar fifty.
im not complaining, other people in here are
undercutting is a natural part of every MMO economy
again, supply and demand
if there are 50 lances up for sale, people will undercut alot more trying to get theirs sold vs the 49 others
if theres only 5 for sale, people probly wont be as worried about it
and massively selling something lower like perigrine said doesnt mean his price is right, just means hes giving people a better deal
if people are willing to pay for something, they are willing to pay for it, thats it eh only thing that matters in the economy
you guys are really quick to insult today, perhaps its time for you to go outside and get some fresh air
While I think the example you give is actually fair in terms of how much you lower the price when you want to rid of items you are no longer using, there is a different issue that really is not in anyone's control. That being the sales person whirlwind people go into when ANYONE undercuts them. Using your example, instead of waiting for your 130k Lance to sell, I've been seeing people pull a, "Oh no you di'eh!" and quickly lower their lances below your price. This will go on till it's not even profitable anymore.
These situations don't have anything to do with supply and demand or items/materials being over priced. It has to do with the proud crafters who take a "If mine won't sell, yours won't either" approach. It's extremely foolish.
You're right, you shouldn't care. At all. Ignorant players with poor market skills shouldn't be on anyone's shoulders. Unless they immediately drop the price by a terribly low 60-70% of what it actually costs. That's really more due to laziness, but if you're reasonable about your pricing when undercutting it should be a non-issue.
I never said you were complaining and I'm not insulting you.
You're bringing up a new question that no one cares about - is it ok to take advantage of buyers who do no market research and just want something now, now, now! Yeah, go for it. Have a blast. Just be aware someone will come along and put up gear for reasonable rates.
This is exactly how this whole thread started - so I was pretty much talking to the original QQers. Not you. Don't take everything so personally. People want to make a profit, take advantage of low supply, or whatever and then are butt hurt when someone else thinks the value of the item should be lower or wants to move their goods faster. Wah.
i wasnt the one who brung up taking advantage of people with high prices
im just commenting on WHY those prices are high(and thats cuz people are in fact willing to pay them)
i wont lie, i do undercut alot myself though
and i do it on purpose
2 months ago ash longbows went for 250k on besaid, i saw this, saw how easy they are to make(cost me maybe 10-15k a bow)
so i made 50 of them
in the first day i sold 5 of them for 200k each
then the undercutting started, i already made my money back and then some so i didnt care
the price, within a week was down to 50k
by then, all my bows had sold
was this wrong to do? hell no
its supply and demand, when there werent many bows up, they went for alot more then when i flooded the market lol
people need to get used to undercutting in general
its the natural order of all MMO economies until you hit the bottom end
also, leveling recipes will never sell worth a damn so people need to get over trying to profit on those too
You know, I see what you're saying here and I agree this is an idiotic way to do business.
People seem to take undercutting personally and do ridiculous things to "get ahead" like take a 50% loss and also set a new standard price inadvertently. At this point, though, the smart thing would be to buy the 2-3 offending lances yourself and just resell all 4 of them (including your own) for marginal profit.
The risk is whether you can sell all 4 lances before these same shenanigans pop back up again and you're forced to buy 3 more lances when you have only sold 1. This is why you should just pick and choose your battles wisely. Things that move fast are better to quibble over than things that only sell 1/week or 1/month. If that's the case, I probably wouldn't have bothered listing it to begin with or I'd list it cheap to get rid of it (like the original offender).
Undercutters are the divine wind of the market long overdue for a correction. They're the bursting of the bubble and the end of decadent greed. They're the recession that such a population could have avoided if they'd have lived responsibly and within their means. They're the answer to the problem of price flippers, market speculators, middlemen, and manipulations, monopolies, and markups.
That's why when an undercutter shows up, oh how they rage. They know the gig is up.
I'm not going to lie and say I don't enjoy finding a market that's being manipulated for way too much profit than what it's worth and cutting it down to size. I shoot the cook. It's a service to the server really.
I want lancers to have access to good weapons more than I want gil.
Indeed.
Yep.
Well said.
In this thread: Some players think their stuff is worth more than it actually is.
One of the characteristics of a good crafter is being able to produce stuff as cheaply, quickly, and efficiently as possible. If others are able to do it better due to being able to gather their own mats, having other people do it for them, having their friends and LS work as a team to create cheap goods, etc, then so be it. Try harder.
This is the same principle behind why battle classes who party advance more than those who just solo. Cooperation makes everything easier.
I've not been buying the gems, just trying to get rid of my stock of gems that I've had for ages. But they do seem to go for around 10k each, and then the electrum nuggets are worth around 4.5-5k each so let's say 22k to make when you factor in the shards. I don't think adding 28k for the time it took to make the synth and the effort of going to Dragonhead or Treespeak is a bad thing. I'd probably make more money mining Halatali and selling the gold. So you've got to add compensation for your time spent in those other areas vs what you could spend in Halatali or no one is going to want to make those rings. You seem to be over looking this factor. I once went up Dragonhead specifically for Amethyst rings. There's some gold up there but not as much as I'd get spending that time in Halatali. So I've got to add some profit to the Amethyst rings I make.
You probably had a point with the electrum ring HQs because you get gold mining anywhere and HQs are a side effect of skilling up on them. But you aren't going to choose to skill up on Garnet or Amethyst rings because you're better off mining Halatali for its gold. Plus I stand by skilling on electrum is like throwing gil down the toilet. I got off it at about 50k to rank 48 and I estimated franciscas would save me about 2 million gil per rank in those final ranks. Scale glue mats are easy to farm, ash hafts come in 16s and you can get someone to skill up on the heads. But let's try and convince people to keep buying that gold sand/ore we mine otherwise it would be worthless lol.
But at the end of the day I'm going to charge a price people are willing to pay. I normally base my prices off what I have sold things for in the past. Garnet and Amethyst rings have always been in the 50-70k range so if I can get that I will. If no one buys them because they're over priced I'll happily lower them. Just like no one is buying my 10k walnut logs right now I'm probably going to lower them to 9k tomorrow. I've let people undercut me on those because I have sold them for 10k in recent past. But the market has decided they're worth 8-9k so fair enough I'll cave in.
you have reserve garnet and amethyst. I have reserve garnet and amethyst. I'm just not burning them to try to capitalize on a futures market. I expect the future market to be a better use of them.
If you have excess rocks, and I have excess rocks, then many people have excess rocks. You and I are not special. You and I are not different. You can argue that they're rare, but they're really not. You just said so.
If there truly weren't a lot of garnets and amethysts, there wouldn't be any more and supply wouldn't be able to keep up with demand of all those crafters needing 3 rings each. They'd be 100k. ONce they were 100k, I'd start using my garnet and amethyst reserves.
Electrum nuggets aren't 5k a piece. You're fudging way too much "pay me for being me" factor.
I was originally keeping my gems for that reason but lately I've been selling off anything that isn't HQ or Amethyst or Garnet because I expect the future market to be T3 gems. It would just be stupid if SE add new recipes for T2s. If they do I can go out and farm some easy enough.
So 6 million gil for the cost of never having to bother relying on anyone else, or the time it takes to synth all the submats...worth it to me. Waste of my time. If I can burn gil to not waste my time, I do it. Silver fransiscas look like a pain. I'll take the opportunity cost of electrum rings, if I don't just straight coast to 50 goldsmither on leves. I have another 45 heliodor and aquamarine gems, and 300 electrum nuggets. I may use them. I may not.
160k sp to go, that's not very much.
It's clear that I take those decisions. You don't. That's why I put the lance up for 130k. You'd put it up for 168.
Plus, I'm saving all my silver. It's going to get me 50-53 BSM. Gonna take a lot of silver still, and coblyns are appropriately nerfed now. Silver's not 1k an ore.
dont forget you can use task boards to get cheaper sp every day too! it may not be much but that 2k sp per city can sure add up when the mats usualy only cost 5k for the turnin compared to some of those more expensive goldsmith synths...ugh theres a reason im saving it for last with cooking
It's not that bad. ALCs usually skill up on scale glue anyway, they'll love you if you bring them free SP. The CRP synth is so low you can probably do it yourself and you could hasty hand the heads if you can't find someone in the late 20s to skill on them. But fair enough if you want to do it with electrum. You don't seem to care about gil so it's no big loss to you.