FIX the AUCTION HOUSE!!!!

Lowering prices does help things sell more quickly since people that are on the fence about buying a particular item might jump on the chance once they see it posted for 10% less than normal or maybe they have a threshold for what they are willing to pay. I myself am interested in buying i90 gear but I'm not going to touch it until the price drops a little bit more. Someone sold some gear the other day for a very nice price and I'm waiting for it to reach that point.

People complain about this all the time, but I have never met one person who hasn't undercut on the market, even if it was only by 1 gil, everyone I know does it...

If there is a player that honesty hasn't, then they can complain about the market being messed up and undercutters and I'll be good with it. :)

undercutting is not something you want to get rid of, otherwise prices will only skyrocket and nobody would buy, making it an even worse economic downturn than a crashed market. IRL people look for these kinds of sellers like tigerdirect, amazon, newegg that gives products/items at discounted rates or wholesale which is really just undercutting big stores. The difference from IRL vs Eorzea is we have a market index that runs though the stockmarket and wallstreet that forces a value to any product that prevents them from going too high or too low based on real statistical values from whats available on the market.


Eorzea doesn't have a index, so a piece of lumber can be anywhere from 1gil to 9999999999 gil at any given time. The only thing that's stopping it from doing that is NPC vendor prices. Items that do not have a NPC vendor price will flux in any direction based on simple supply and demand theories, to stop that we don't want a static list price, we want an adjustable list price.

An adjustable list price for any item can be done through a internal program that calculates an individual item's history of how much it is sold for, rate of sale, and total items floating about on the market, and adds an average list price based on those values and adjusts every 24 hours. Why 24 hours? if it adjusts in real time, you can flood the board and lock out the list price system all together. Having a daily market adjustment will give headway to buyers and sellers and allow the market to flux through projections. Basically think of the stockmarket. If the market becomes empty on a particular day because of some demand or the market reached its all time low, it returns to the average list price the previous day, forcing sellers to sell higher and locking out undercutters keeping the market too low.

Basically the market is unregulated, and some people like this and some people don't. SE holds its player base responsible for the economic shit hole its in, which is how it should be. If SE steps in and adds large economic regulations from a static program, I think its going to be an even greater shitstorm than ever because we are asking SE to create a form of government.

Shai mentioned having a static list price with a 5% undercut rate that changes the list price, all you are doing is slowing undercutters from crashing the market but it will eventually crash, due to nobody wanting to sell at list price. The base price will just lower and lower until it stays at 1gil a pop. Very small percentage of players are white knights and we cannot rely on them to bring marketboards back up.

I undercut by CHUNKS. I'm not in a bidding war, I'm here to make money by my minimal investment strategy. I'll sell in bulk on a DIFFERENT set of morals than a merchant union style of thinking.

If the market is saying a saw at lvl 20 is worth 12k and it costs me 300 gil to craft said saw, I'm freakin undercutting everyone down to 7k! I make a huge profit, it sells faster, I alter prices more in favor of the buyers, and I can feel GOOD about it. I can make lots and sell them more often since no one wants to pay an inflated price.

Sometimes I like crashing the glamour market for fun, by continuously providing the cheapest glamours until they reach a good price for everyone, then I wait for it to go up and do it all over again.

While most items have been crashed to make the risk of making them not worth crafting, I just stick to neglected tools and items and help keep them affordable.

THE MARKET IS MY PVP ZONE!!!

I undercut. Here's the typical scenario:

I want the most gil, so I undercut by 1 gil. During peak hours I will do this several times an hour. If I encounter an active undercutter who is matching me hour by hour, I will start cutting by 10-20% a pop. The other player typically keeps on cutting me by 1 gil. So this goes on long enough and the other player gets mad. That's when the fun starts. Most of the time, they give up and either stop undercutting or take their items off the market. BUT for a real treat, the mad people will sometimes start trying to out undercut me! They bottom out their prices by sometimes 80% off the original price. Enter my trollface.jpg moment -- I buy it all and put it right back up for my original price.

Free market -- my suggestion is to not undercut me. Sucks, but I'm talking about HUGE PROFITS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PixelPirate

I undercut. Here's the typical scenario:

I want the most gil, so I undercut by 1 gil. During peak hours I will do this several times an hour. If I encounter an active undercutter whose is matching me hour by hour, I will start cutting by 10-20% a pop. The other player typically keeps on cutting me by 1 gil. So this goes on long enough and the other player gets mad. That's when the fun starts. Most of the time, they give up and either stop undercutting or take their items off the market. BUT for a real treat, the mad people will sometimes start trying to out undercut me! They bottom out their prices by sometimes 80% off the original price. Enter my trollface.jpg moment -- I buy it all and put it right back up for me original price.

Free market -- my suggestion is to not undercut me. Sucks, but I'm talking about HUGE PROFITS.

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You are an evil evil merchant... and have earned my respect

Market Board
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Supply/demand, how economy works.

OP
Too greedy and want more profit, please fix it.

People have alluded to the reason why others will severely undercut others prices. It's rather simple.

If you undercut by a lot, it is less likely some one will come along and cut it further. That means most likely your item will sell. They are giving away gil yes, but they are also giving them higher chances of selling the item without being undercut.

Who wins? People buying things.

Who loses? People selling things.

It's rather funny that the sellers want to use regulation to inflate their prices. How many of you go around and say how horrible prices are in real life and blame greedy corporations. But then you turn around and do the same thing digitally.

"Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”― Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Originally Posted by PixelPirate

That's when the fun starts. Most of the time, they give up and either stop undercutting or take their items off the market. BUT for a real treat, the mad people will sometimes start trying to out undercut me! They bottom out their prices by sometimes 80% off the original price. Enter my trollface.jpg moment -- I buy it all and put it right back up for my original price.

Free market -- my suggestion is to not undercut me. Sucks, but I'm talking about HUGE PROFITS.

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Props. I don't have the patience for that. But mad props man. One flaw, some one could come by and gobble it all up before you get a chance too. But that's the risk you take I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Shioban

snip

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That's just pure ignorance. Of course it's going to sell faster, it's the cheaper item. It's not like he's "missing out" on any money. What if the item isn't worth 5k?

You seem to be forgetting that the OPPOSITE happens too, where items that are easily under 100k can sell for much higher than what they're worth. I'd much rather see items be cheap and easier to obtain rather than more expensive and only obtainable by people who purchase gil. This happened in the last MMO I played. 1000 copper = 1 silver. 1000 silver = 1 gold. 100 gold = 1 gem. level 70 blue +10 items used to cost 10 gold at the MOST now they're 1.5 gems or higher (which gems are very hard to obtain by a person who doesn't pay for their money)