Undercut Hell

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Originally Posted by Melondra

Im glad im not the only one that agrees on this a Blind Auction must be implemented in order for this game to survive. As for you FANBOY's out there im glad half of u were not in Alpha or beta or this game would be even more screwed up.

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So basically, because you cannot cope with the current system you want it scrapped to more favour you. Righto.

As with any player based economy, making currency is fairly easy. As long as you've put the effort in to learn what the current demands are and current going rate of items and then plan for those items.

There will always be fluctuations in price. There will always be people selling at silly prices for quick gil. You just need adapt your prices or move away from that item until it stabilises. Or take a gamble and try take advantage of those situations for greater profit.

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

.. And to those who use the excuse "it's my item, I'll sell it for whatever", that's a poor excuse, learn to be a team player and undercut correctly..

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Sorry,but the MB isn't coil raid where everyone has to follow your dance. I find your statement amusing that you would expect "team playing" from a free market where the main principle governing is supposed to be "supply and demand". Maybe you should set up and form a static for MB in party finder like a coil raid? :D

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Originally Posted by Fellisin

So basically, because you cannot cope with the current system you want it scrapped to more favour you. Righto.

As with any player based economy, making currency is fairly easy. As long as you've put the effort in to learn what the current demands are and current going rate of items and then plan for those items.

There will always be fluctuations in price. There will always be people selling at silly prices for quick gil. You just need adapt your prices or move away from that item until it stabilises. Or take a gamble and try take advantage of those situations for greater profit.

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No that's not what I said ,I am talking about a system that would benifit everyone in the game from,crafters,to gathers etc and that will benefit the economy as a whole don't twist my words around.

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Originally Posted by Melondra

No that's not what I said ,I am talking about a system that would benifit everyone in the game from,crafters,to gathers etc and that will benefit the economy as a whole don't twist my words around.

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As long as you put in the effort to learn what is in demand then crafters and gatherers benefit from the current system just fine.

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

Lol That's what the price for this one item I was trying to sell looks like. 60k all week, doing well so I decide "I'm going to make a few and make some gil" well it eventually dropped to 40k, so I put it for 39,999, someone does 38k, then some idiot decides to be "smart" and put it for 7k, then 7 other people drop it down to 2k -.-

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A good advise for you - if you really wanna talk about fairness and teamplay - *match* the price and do not undercut even for 1 gil. As any undercut even the smallest one may lead to price war, those often become quite brutal.

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

I wish those idiots would realize, dropping it that much might sell theirs faster, but overall it's just screwing everyone else out of time/gil.

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You just have a poor experience at such things.
Other day I simply killed the guy who wanted to sell a bit faster by undercutting me by a little and dropped prices by half, and now I have over half of the market at price just 30% lower than before price war started. It still huge profits for me at this price, especially as I captured more marketshare than I had before.

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

you're in such a rush to sell something and don't give a crap about others, which you know, you should, considering it's a mmo, you know multiplayer.

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MB is competitive multiplayer, not cooperative one. If I can force you out of business and get all marketshare for myself I will do it in a blink of an eye. I will raise prices of course after I achieve such result to a "reasonable" level.

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Originally Posted by Blitzace

Tell me, How does selling items for 1.5kk make any sense when the mats it self cost over 2kk? :)

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Prices of mats arent fixed; they fluctuate like everything else in a free market. They can also be gathered, so no telling how much it costs someone to make a product.

Also mats have many uses which may cause their prices to inflate. Silver ingots, for example, have inflated due to housing. This doesnt mean that all silver products suddenly inflate as well, as supply/demand for these products likely stayed within their normal range.

I suppose if the person needs the Gil asap I can see them undercutting, but you are really screwing everyone else and devaluing the classes. What really annoys me is when ppl post like 99 of a type of item when really nobody needs that amount. I don't undercut people because I know that's ruining the item's value; however, I will split an item into 5 quantities and sell them at the highest that they have sold before over a period of days.

Tried to sell some rush grass today at 34k(the current listing price) and some hours later 3 people decide to list at 17k and 19.999 gil. They don't choose 33k or 30k, but cut to nearly 50% of everyone else. This is what pisses me off because now everyone else is gonna list at those prices and the market crashes.

The market has crashed many times over apparently.

need cash now? call JG wentworth

or undercut people

also lol at people trying to collude to fix prices at artificially high rates. get bent

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

The market has crashed many times over apparently.

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This cycle is actually not uncommon. Sometimes a lot of people decide to sell one item and it bring down the price, a lot and fast. As much as I hate to sit on inventory, I just move out of the market until the price comes back.

The markets are generally pretty volatile, but that's to be expected. Even the largest servers have a low population for a market system.

lol @ people that can't compete and come to forums to whine about it though.

I always laugh hysterically when I see sellers who think they have the right or even capacity to dictate prices in a free market, ESPECIALLY in an MMO.

Supply for goods in MMOs is always increasing. Always. Every day there are new crafters/gatherers able to produce the same goods as you; there's no such thing as branding, every item can be guaranteed by the fact that it's a video game to be identical in quality and function. Therefore, every new seller on the market is absolute competition, and the only meaningful distinction between sellers is their price points.
Prices are set as a factor of quality, material cost, labor/logistics cost, tax, and other surcharges (e.g. branding)
We already know that quality, tax, and material cost are fixed for all sellers, (HQ vs NQ notwithstanding, as they are effectively different goods) and the thing that I think trips up most sellers who complain about undercutting is that labor has no real value in this game. SE is not providing you with subsidies, there is no minimum wage, and 99% of all sellers/crafters are NOT hiring other people to produce goods that need to be compensated. Your labor has only the value of what the market gives it when buyers/sellers decide to price goods. The sellers that get all upset about undercutting have some magical idea in their heads of what their labor is worth, have tacked on some artificial value on top of that as their desired profit, and then get butthurt when the price point starts cutting into what they think are labor costs.

Here's a hint: the open market will not give even a moment's consideration to what YOU think your labor is worth. If some other seller is okay with charging slightly less because they think that's still a fair price for their labor, there is not a damn thing you can do about it. Especially because this is a video game, where material supply is limitless in all but the most niche of instances, (time-locked materials like Platinum/Glazenuts, artificially limited goods like Demimateria/ventures, etc.) market prices for finished products will ALWAYS slowly drift down from the inflation of new content releases until they bottom out at material cost + a small margin. This margin is dictated by the number of SELLERS willing to SELL at low labor costs, so the size of it tends to vary by the rarity of the product, but the point is that having large margins will never ever be sustainable. The sooner you get that into your head the more profit you will make.

I love it when the undercutting has gotten so bad that its more profitable to just sell it to an NPC vendor.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

I love it when the undercutting has gotten so bad that its more profitable to just sell it to an NPC vendor.

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I do this from time to time, I find people going below NPC price on something and buy up an bunch of stacks of stuff 1-5 gil below NPC price and walk over to a NPC and sell them all for 99-500 gil for basically doing nothing.

Pays for my next teleport anyways.

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Originally Posted by Melondra

Im glad im not the only one that agrees on this a Blind Auction must be implemented in order for this game to survive. As for you FANBOY's out there im glad half of u were not in Alpha or beta or this game would be even more screwed up.

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Was in beta.

Take your ignorant assumptions elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Aunalise

This thread is so entertaining!



LOL. Love to find someone who would undercut by 10k every time. At some point I buy the item from them myself, turn around and realize more profit from it than they just did when I bought it.

A vending machine is owned by one guy or company, and he sets ALL the prices on everything in it. The Board is 1000s of people selling the same items at different prices because they each value them differently. The 1g undercutter may value it at 40K less than current market price, but he isn't going to leave 40K on the table if he's smart.

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This doesn't work when you have more stock up then they can afford to buy.

Market control is half part saturation and half part pricing.

I hope i'm not the only one who feels this way, but it's actually the 1g under-cutters that annoy me and I purposely avoid them and purchase the item below them.

If you want me to buy your product out of 60 others, it is going to take more than just being top of the list and 1g cheaper.

"I don't understand how cost vs demand works!"

Uhh o... k...
I don't see how any of that is our nor SE's concern though?

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

Tried to sell some rush grass today at 34k(the current listing price) and some hours later 3 people decide to list at 17k and 19.999 gil. They don't choose 33k or 30k, but cut to nearly 50% of everyone else. This is what pisses me off because now everyone else is gonna list at those prices and the market crashes.

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Or you could of brought the three out and made yourself 45k!

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Originally Posted by Micro_Machine

I hope i'm not the only one who feels this way, but it's actually the 1g under-cutters that annoy me and I purposely avoid them and purchase the item below them.

If you want me to buy your product out of 60 others, it is going to take more than just being top of the list and 1g cheaper.

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So what's the magical number that you think people should be undercutting by? 5 gil? 10? 100? The entire point of undercutting is to get your item to be the first on the list to attract the maximum potential buyers. Undercutting by 1 gil isn't being spiteful, it's business plain and simple. Personally, I usually undercut rounded down to the next 5 gil unless the item is less than 100 gil then I'm a 1 gil undercutter.

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Originally Posted by Aunalise

But I undercut by 1g someone who posted at 10001g, or 8001g several times this week alone. Now you just bought from me!

It's all arbitrary. Buy whichever one you want, but don't assume you have exercised some moral principle by buying a particular price level, whether the previous price was 1g higher, 98g higher, or 786g higher.

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Er, yes, but you asume there is a logical reason for everything I do. If you undercut 8001g by 1g, I will buy from you :) I like round numbers cos they don't make me think and they leave my balance looking tidy. People can sell at whatever price they want, and I just buy if I want to. Paying one gill more is just the rebel in me not wanting to do what people expect. That and thinking that I may have made someone happy who thought they had been undercut already (who for all I know could be a bot operator). I just NPC everything I don't need - it's quicker.

Undercutting is the mechanism by which supply drives down prices.
Buying is the mechanism by which demand drives up prices.

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Originally Posted by Melondra

No that's not what I said ,I am talking about a system that would benifit everyone in the game from,crafters,to gathers etc and that will benefit the economy as a whole don't twist my words around.

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There no mutual benefit between gatherers, crafters and consumers as their wishes are completely different.
Gatherers want high demand and high prices for their component.
Crafters want high supply and low prices for components and high demand and high prices for products.
Consumers wants low prices and only willing to provide high demand if prices reasonable enough.

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Originally Posted by Fellisin

Or you could of brought the three out and made yourself 45k!

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It might be quite dangerous as having a stable buyer is a huge opportunity for seasoned crafter. The whole idea of reselling only works for occasional seller, not for the active crafter in the market. As they most often can just craft more items and you'll end up with stuffed inventory.

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Originally Posted by Fellisin

Or you could of brought the three out and made yourself 45k!

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If I had tried doing that I would have lost gil because the price is at around 7k right now with constant lower prices. In roughly one week the price of Rush Grass has gone from some 120k to 7k gil

why is this topic even going on, people practice the prices they feel is good for them. Whether is undercut or not, it doesnt matter, as long as YOU seller are happy with the price you set, be it above the market, in the market or out market prices....it happens to me, how can you sell a piece of gear 10 for a mage at 15k `???that to me is abuse BUT is my thought and in this case I have undercut it by alot, down to 2k...why ? because I felt it wasnt worth more then that, I am kind of a philosophical one...I consider prices for the piece and not in function of the rest of you people, fi I feel the market is too low, and I consider my gear more valuable, I will simply not put it on the market, either dematerialize or plain sell to NPC, each do what they feel right...you assume the consequences of your decisions..but whining is totally silly

Mei

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Originally Posted by Felessan

It might be quite dangerous as having a stable buyer is a huge opportunity for seasoned crafter. The whole idea of reselling only works for occasional seller, not for the active crafter in the market. As they most often can just craft more items and you'll end up with stuffed inventory.

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I was under the impression the item was a crafting material not a crafted item.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

If I had tried doing that I would have lost gil because the price is at around 7k right now with constant lower prices. In roughly one week the price of Rush Grass has gone from some 120k to 7k gil

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As with anything with a player base economy it would of been a gamble.

But considering it dropped from 120k in such a short manner of time, then the original 34k which you stated as listed price sounds like it would of been unrealistic to expect since the market price was already rapidly dropping. Information which wasn't in your original post, if it was. I wouldn't of suggested to try to reshift them as the price wasn't stable.

When you're pricing an item, the current listed price for that item is not the only resource. There is also the sale history, which I find to be a far more reliable gauge of the item's value.

For example. Today I was putting some items on the market that my retainer brought back. I noticed that only 3 of the item were on the market for around 34k, with one at 50k. Generally if there are that few on the market I'll look at the sale history to make sure these just weren't the only overpriced items that hadn't sold yet (especially if there is a wide price disparity). I did so, and found that nearly every single copy of the item that sold in the past month sold for under 17k. So I put my item up for 18k because I actually wanted to sell it, not just have it sit on the market at 2-3x as expensive as the items that are actually selling.

If people are consistently undercutting you by 40-50%, maybe you're overvaluing your product just a tad.

What bugs me more is people who don't take into account the amount of the item. General sales logic - the more you're offering in a stack, the less they should cost per item than if you were selling individually. But nope. You put a stack up of 50 or whatever, make it a lower price than buying that item individually or at lower stacks, then some moron puts 1 of that item up for cheaper.....just so they're at the top of the list. :|

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Originally Posted by DenzelTaru

*first post*

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I'm that second type I guess, of undercutter. But you have to wear the boots of the another sometimes.

I only craft and only sell in my server one thing, ONLY ONE THING... Glamour prisms grade 1 LTW and WVR... I have been doing that during months... Some days and even weeks I'm happily selling them without problems, but then start to come other crafters that see a good business on it and start to undercut me by one, making me lose a lot of sells, I have thousand, thousand of those items to sell and I don't mind to sell them to 999 if needed. What I don't have is the time to check all the damn moment the market (Basically because I can only play mostly the weekends)

So... when someone new comes and see glamours are 9999 and thinks "Oh, cool! I'm going to drop it now to 9998 and sell a lot"! I have to instantly drop it to 7999 to show them that the item is going to be worthless. then they undercut again, 7998... They sell, I don't, because I have not the time to check, I only have a few hours in night to see market... SO... What can I do to protect my dear unique item I sell since months?... Make it useless, even for myself, I keep dropping and dropping until the new guy sees that it is useless to keep selling or making it. (I have been weeks selling a lot of glamours UNDER the cost price for crafting them...)

So, OP, you should not criminalize at all the 'undercutters' that come and undercut by a lot... I hate more those who come and undercut me by one all the time... People who can't be checking every 5 minutes tend to undercut a lot, people who can be 24h in the market board can undercut by one. It's not a matter of which one has the reason, is just a different style of marketing based in the time disponibility of seller.

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Originally Posted by Aeliott

What bugs me more is people who don't take into account the amount of the item. General sales logic - the more you're offering in a stack, the less they should cost per item than if you were selling individually. But nope. You put a stack up of 50 or whatever, make it a lower price than buying that item individually or at lower stacks, then some moron puts 1 of that item up for cheaper.....just so they're at the top of the list. :|

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This is the type of person you can make money off. I often put a stack of 99 items on for half the going rate then buy up all the fools who undercut me with smaller stacks. Then it's just a matter of removing the 99 stack and reselling the ones you just bought at the going rate.