Undercutting

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Not really sure what the message is. For all we know they bought up your 80% off firesale and just sat on it to sell when prices rebounded.

Unless you've been monopolizing these 3-4 items for months, in which case I'd say they're selling other items and got to live in your head rent free.

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https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...34/854/man.jpg

One thing about the GW2 Trading Post that is the same as here, is that people will undercut by 1 currency just to have priority on selling.
It is the buy order part of the system that never made sense to me. Why would I ever make a buy order that is higher than a sell order? Surely everyone would just buy everything at the current lowest price, always.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

I do laugh when I see people undercut to the point where they're actively losing money
Like slashing prices on stuff that was already selling super fast, or posting stuff for less than what a vendor will buy it for
Bit of an odd choice tbh

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I laugh, but then I buy some of it and just vendor it. I've made plenty of gil this way, but I also suspect some are purposely posting items at vendor price to encourage others to undercut. I can't see any other reason why the price drops so dramatically for these items and always by the same retainer.

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Originally Posted by Gortys

I laugh, but then I buy some of it and just vendor it. I've made plenty of gil this way, but I also suspect some are purposely posting items at vendor price to encourage others to undercut. I can't see any other reason why the price drops so dramatically for these items and always by the same retainer.

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I'd say it was me, but all I do nowadays is sell Eureka stuff on PF.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

One thing about the GW2 Trading Post that is the same as here, is that people will undercut by 1 currency just to have priority on selling.
It is the buy order part of the system that never made sense to me. Why would I ever make a buy order that is higher than a sell order? Surely everyone would just buy everything at the current lowest price, always.

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The thing there is, the buy orders are more like “I want this thing and here is the max I’m willing to pay for it”. The standing sell orders are too expensive for this person, or more likely they put in a buy order of like 1,000 things with plans to resell it for profit.

Your average player doesn’t check carefully and just buys or sells at the current order value. The guy making bank is flipping 1,000s of units.

I just think the undercutting has gone way too far, I mean most mats are not cheap to get, and when you invest and things are selling for say 90K for a max 570 crafted gear and then 2 days later that same piece is 20K this is just unreasonable. We work hard to level our crafters to have people shit on the way to make money, I was behind on my crafting, finally got it all leveled up a few weeks after end walker only to find I can not make any money to get the things I want in-game, it is dishearting. And if people think it is funny it is not. And for those that are enjoying it, power to you. I just think it is wrong to undercut by 5 to 10K an item, just so it tanks the market, and then everyone else starts doing it that way, and then bam, endgame items sell for so cheap no one makes any more items, gil etc. then the whole market crashes.

There's nothing wrong with undercutting.

There is something wrong with undercutting by thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

It doesn't make your item sell much faster, all it does is hurt your own profits and everyone else's. Undercut by 1 to 100 for the sake of keeping things profitable for everyone and the economy healthy.
Sometimes we can save it by buying the item and re-selling it for the proper price, and this is something I encourage people to do if they see a ridiculous undercut, but when multiple people do outrageous undercuts even this becomes a lost cause.
Undercut small!

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

I will continue undercutting...usually by 1gil.

99.9% of what I sell is junk brought to me by my army of retainers...no matter the sale price it's free money.

I don't mind undercutting that much, though some people take it too far in the name of greed which has a negative impact on the market. I think the general rule of undercutting by 1 should serve most people fine, since that puts your stack on the top of the list and makes it much more likely to sell.

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Originally Posted by Heavenly_Damned

I just think the undercutting has gone way too far, I mean most mats are not cheap to get, and when you invest and things are selling for say 90K for a max 570 crafted gear and then 2 days later that same piece is 20K this is just unreasonable. We work hard to level our crafters to have people shit on the way to make money, I was behind on my crafting, finally got it all leveled up a few weeks after end walker only to find I can not make any money to get the things I want in-game, it is dishearting. And if people think it is funny it is not. And for those that are enjoying it, power to you. I just think it is wrong to undercut by 5 to 10K an item, just so it tanks the market, and then everyone else starts doing it that way, and then bam, endgame items sell for so cheap no one makes any more items, gil etc. then the whole market crashes.

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Nonsense. It has nothing to do with other players. Your crafted items are simply worthless. Barely anyone needs them. I've stepped in things that are worth more.

Leveling crafters is not hard work. It's a much shorter time investment than it used to be. EXP has been almost tripled on top of Ishgard and collectibles being highly accessible. You can craft Master Recipes with barely any melds, materia is miles cheaper and easy to obtain from scrips and infinite spiritbond. Mats rain from the sky from various sources. Gathering is a joke, even Legendary nodes barely need melds. It didn't used to be liked that.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. But players asked for easier crafting. Easier crafting means more people can craft their own items. Thus demand drops while supply skyrockets. That's what crashes the markets.

Some players wanted a slice of that gil pie that high end crafters enjoyed in earlier expansions. But you can't divide a single pie among a million people and expect everyone to get a fat slice. All you'll get is a crumb. There are merits to accessible crafting, but it comes at a cost. You can have accessible crafting or rewarding crafting, not both.

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Originally Posted by Heavenly_Damned

I just think the undercutting has gone way too far, I mean most mats are not cheap to get, and when you invest and things are selling for say 90K for a max 570 crafted gear and then 2 days later that same piece is 20K this is just unreasonable.

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Undercutting and specific market crashing down are two different things. New items start high but go down really fast. More so in EW where there is more players so more crafters. On 6.0.5 patch day Tincture of vitality was 100k on my world which was unreal price. After day or two it was like 9k, then 900. For one stock have build up and two - demand dropped a lot.

Undercutting can be a separate topic. It will happen but also some want to control specific markets by instantly undercutting with bots/what have you and denying anyone but them the sales.

My take on undercutting is that generally speaking, lowering the price does not drive up demand. The average player sees an item on the MB and will buy that item, regardless of the price (200M Wivre Horns not withstanding). An item that was selling 20x per day at 50k on a weekday, will still sell the same 20x per day at 20k.

Moreover, the average player just buys the lowest priced item on the MB. They don't care if it was undercut by 1 gil or 10000 gil. And they don't care for clever names like "DontBuyFromUndercutters."

There is no such thing as undercutting.

People list items at a price that THEY want to - if that is lower than you want them to price it than that is your problem.

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Originally Posted by Bearded

There is no such thing as undercutting.

People list items at a price that THEY want to - if that is lower than you want them to price it than that is your problem.

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You know what listing items for prices lower than other people is? Undercutting.

Undercut bots coupled with aggressive manual undercutters perpetuates a self-defeating cycle where the price wars between the two groups rapidly tank prices on everything until only the former are making much profit for the time spent (Seeing as they're generally also botting crafts and therefore not expending any time at all).

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

You know what listing items for prices lower than other people is? Undercutting.

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Technically, it is not undercutting.
It is market adjusting itself, your item simply does not worth the price you think it is.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Leveling crafters is not hard work. It's a much shorter time investment than it used to be. EXP has been almost tripled on top of Ishgard and collectibles being highly accessible.

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Absolutely. Levelling up crafters is now so buffed that it's not hard to finish them in a day if you grind it, and less than a week if you stroll.

I did the alt path on Materia DC, rather than transfer over a finished character. It's now 90 mining and botany, and all crafts. Getting to 80 on all crafts was 4 hours after I got the mats. 80 to 90 took a fraction longer, as I am not in EW yet.

This screenshot with 700% XP buff is from the gathering, and crafting in Ishgard is faster. 0-20 was maybe 15 crafts, then into Ishgard and 2 to 3 levels per single turnin.

https://i.gyazo.com/327297da267e2e66...d3122e1e53.png

What annoys me about undercutting most are those who undercut for 1g just to keep their stuff at the top of the list and sit there for ages doing it and I cannot go off and do other stuff without them making my retainer listings 10x harder to get anything sold off even for 10 minutes.

At that point, I undercut by heavy amounts just to spite them.

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Originally Posted by Heavenly_Damned

I just think the undercutting has gone way too far, I mean most mats are not cheap to get, and when you invest and things are selling for say 90K for a max 570 crafted gear and then 2 days later that same piece is 20K this is just unreasonable. We work hard to level our crafters to have people shit on the way to make money, I was behind on my crafting, finally got it all leveled up a few weeks after end walker only to find I can not make any money to get the things I want in-game, it is dishearting. And if people think it is funny it is not. And for those that are enjoying it, power to you. I just think it is wrong to undercut by 5 to 10K an item, just so it tanks the market, and then everyone else starts doing it that way, and then bam, endgame items sell for so cheap no one makes any more items, gil etc. then the whole market crashes.

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• Leveling DoH/L is very easy & stupid fast.
• Legendary nodes does not require any sort of esotericism to understood.
• Crafting rotations are all over the internet, all you have to do is to adjust what your current stats allows you to craft & whether its rotation will work or not. We even have trial synthesis to test those rotations.

In the end all those bloated 500k price per gear pieces you saw in early hours of patch days; those were the crafters selling time. Additionally bringing you back to the first point: considering how easy it is to raise your own DoH/L, you end up with too much supply than demand. Why should people buy when they can make it themselves OR have their crafter friends craft it for free willingly?

But try to look it this from brighter perspective: with raised DoH/L now you too can make stuffs for your own. Long gone those days when you’re at the mercy of people/bots’ pricing. It helps you to -not- spend gils. Maybe you can even prep for next new crafted gear patch to reap all those fortune in those limited, early hours of patch day!

It’s still a boon to yourself, regardless.

Thats like getting mad at competition. Who cares, I say just price it whatever the price you would think it'll sell more and be done with it. If people get mad then thats on them for being such self-entitled little crybabies.

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

if something is selling at 80k gil (and i mean selling, not sitting there), either price at 80k or 79,999. you make more money, the market doesn’t tank, everyone wins. people will ALMOST always buy the first one on the list anyways, regardless of if its insanely cheap or priced right at market value. you simply shoot yourself in the foot, as well as everyone else.

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I have seen something selling for a moderate amount like 2000 drop to 70gil and it makes me fiesty, but I just get fed up and sell into different markets at that point. It was way worse when I would spend a few hours on collecting a mat at lower level that wasn't on the market at all than I get undercut by a lot. Though I do not have the best of luck so say farming for Archaeornis Skin in heavensward when in heavensward expansion getting barely any and trying to make a small amount of gil is just depressing. I usually factor in how much time it took to get the stuffs, make it, sell it and usually sell it for whatever price is the lowest depending on how many of that item is for sale. You can get away with selling things at the same price and still make bank on it so might as well not undercut. Though what you have said reminds me of all of those times I sell something for months than little Timmy comes in selling a million slots with his 12 retainers for 1 gil tanking the market entirely. I just wonder why, I have never sold something for 1gil but wouldn't the tax make you get nothing in return, it would be better to just sell it to an npc at that point.

I can’t begrudge a slight undercut by a few gil especially if they’re selling a single item or say a smaller stack of crafting mats. What floors me is when most everyone is pricing a more desired crafting material around similar prices, one or two gil off, and then someone comes along and lowers it by say 1000 gil or more. You’ll think mine will definitely sell but then everyone lowers theirs as well. If it’s a popular material or item it’s going to sell regardless just base it with the others. It’ll sell. Fast cash isn’t always best cash.

Meh.. I don't care. I craft to relax. I don't aggressively do the price war thing. I dont mind if mine sells second or third.

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Originally Posted by Ultaniku

What floors me is when most everyone is pricing a more desired crafting material around similar prices, one or two gil off, and then someone comes along and lowers it by say 1000 gil or more.

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If it was actually desirable, a single person wouldn't be able to crash the price like that.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

If it was actually desirable, a single person wouldn't be able to crash the price like that.

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It isn’t usually just a single person. It’s that avalanche especially if everyone is watching their items like a hawk and tank the prices the second someone lowers their materials a good bit. The higher crafting leathers usually sell pretty well on my server and usually around 3-4K a piece. And they sell rather quickly, so when people see they’re selling they will lower the price a good bit and then it just turns into everyone lowering the prices. They sell well on their own. The price gouge isn’t necessary.

I'm a fairly new player and initially started crafting so I could supply my own gear and save a lot of gil, but fell in love with it and haven't looked back.

When I first started selling stuff on the market I would get really frustrated with the 1 gil undercutters and drop my price waaaay too much out of spite, not understanding how everything works. After a bit of time and experience I look at it as a game (well this *is* a game lol). Either undercut by a gil or match the price of the other undercutter in the vast majority of cases.

I will say this - you can make quite a bit of gil working the market, but you HAVE to be proactive. You can't just load up a retainers with dozens of items expecting them all to sell in a very short period of time without actively managing them I use no addons, no botting software or anything like that, but I spend a LOT of time gathering mats to craft stuff, crafting items and watching for trends. Every morning when I log in I check several broad categories - food, furniture, gear, mats, etc. to see what's selling and will gather mats and craft up those items in bulk. It changes every day, and I watch my auctions like a hawk, checking them once an hour and adjusting accordingly.

This is my endgame vs. running dungeons/raids. I find it very satisfying and think of it as pvp almost. Not everyone has the patience to gather, craft and manage their auctions, but if you do it will pay off in spades.

If you're new to crafting and selling on the market, don't take the 1 gil undercutters personally. Smile and reprice your wares to 1 gil under them and go about your day. If the price drops more than you're willing to sell for simply pull your stuff and wait a day or two and pop it back on the market.

Have fun with it!

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

if something is selling at 80k gil (and i mean selling, not sitting there), either price at 80k or 79,999. you make more money, the market doesn’t tank, everyone wins. people will ALMOST always buy the first one on the list anyways, regardless of if its insanely cheap or priced right at market value. you simply shoot yourself in the foot, as well as everyone else.

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That's not how markets work. Valuation is whatever people are willing to pay immediately, not after they've waited for the item to go down in price. Whatever people are paying for an item that moves it quickly is its actual value, not a "tanked" value. If someone moves an item at for 20k at -1000 your listing price, they are not -1k, they are +20k, and you are -+0. IE, they made money and you didn't, so you can't sit here telling people how to make more money when you don't actually know how.

I regularly buy from the second or third cheapest option just because I hate undercutters, and gil is mostly meaningless anyway I am not here to pinch pennies.

Personally I love when people undercut by stupidly large amounts because I end up making a ton of gil for zero effort on my part.

I usually undercut 1gil. I'll undercut by large amount if I feel the current price is too much. I sit on buyer's shoes too.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

FFXIV just happens to have a more aggressive undercutting since there is no fee for listing items to consider. Other than that the only way to compete in a markerboard centric economy is to undercut. Also, if you happen to play on PC download a few addons to speed up the process to just a few clics per retainer.

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Wait, what add on?

*farms material*
*crafts items*
*Undercut to my heart's content*
If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't change the price later. I don't have time to baby my retainers, they are too busy getting me more crystals to undercut others~!

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Originally Posted by Ultaniku

It isn’t usually just a single person. It’s that avalanche especially if everyone is watching their items like a hawk and tank the prices the second someone lowers their materials a good bit. The higher crafting leathers usually sell pretty well on my server and usually around 3-4K a piece. And they sell rather quickly, so when people see they’re selling they will lower the price a good bit and then it just turns into everyone lowering the prices. They sell well on their own. The price gouge isn’t necessary.

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Why do you think everyone is fine undercutting a single person who just dropped the price by a huge amount? That avalanche happens for a reason. Everyone wants to stay in that market. It doesn't matter if they "sell fast", the supply is still far greater. You might see 100 selling a day, but if 200 are being pushed onto the market not everyone can sell theirs. So players will be aggressive, take the price crash and relist frequently.

The higher crafting leathers are worthless. Timed node mats are easy to gather and used for Spiritbond, so cheap. Tome mats have crashed in price. You just churn them out on a 4 button macro and even if you barely break even you get 12 materia for every 100. A large majority of players can spam these effortlessly. When items are worthless a price crash is inevitable.

If the items were hard to make and desirable, this wouldn't happen. Let's say one person undercut by a huge amount and everyone followed. The buyers would leap at the chance to get rare and desirable items dirt cheap and clean the mb to stock up. Sir undercut would have ran out of items and they're hard to make so he can't list more right away. The price would return to normal.

I don't know how players don't get this. "But my items used to sell well!" means nothing when the item in question is cheap junk tens of thousands of other people could make 100 of within an hour.

If i try to sell the item and see a person constantly undercutting me by one gil, i just pu my item on 10k/50k/100k less than theirs. They are free to buy and resell it if they so wish, but I just want to get rid of the thing getting some money, not to sit the whole day on the MB playing 4d chess with a person probably having nothing else to do tbh.