Undercutting.

No, this is not a thread complaining about people who price their items low to sell quickly. I'm not going to whine about people getting into undercut wars or how undercutting by huge amounts hurts the game's economy. I have no problem with people who want to sell their items for cheaper than someone else.

But for the love of god if you're going to undercut, have some common sense :

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/l...2.png~original

And don't undercut yourself.

Actually, I undercut myself at times on purpose.

1- To find out at what price other players are willing to buy my stuff, at least sooner rather than later.
2- I undercut one retainer using another so as not to lead people to think both retainers are owned by the same player and make it look like competition.

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Originally Posted by Barboron

Actually, I undercut myself at times on purpose.
1- To find out at what price other players are willing to buy my stuff, at least sooner rather than later.

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You do realize there is a "sale history" tab when you put something up for sale that shows you how much, and when (date and time) items sell for, right?

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

You do realize there is a "sale history" tab when you put something up for sale that shows you how much, and when (date and time) items sell for, right?

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Yeah but it doesn't tell you how long it is up there for for every single item. I gave you reasons as to why I may undercut myself. That doesn't mean I do it every chance I get. Since you brought up the sale history tab, that doesn't quite put this situation into perspective. What if another player came and undercut this player? Why decrease the value of both entries when you could do it to just one, have the second player's item sell quick, leaving your own to be the two cheapest entries (or just the one) at a higher price.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barboron

Yeah but it doesn't tell you how long it is up there for for every single item. I gave you reasons as to why I may undercut myself. That doesn't mean I do it every chance I get. Since you brought up the sale history tab, that doesn't quite put this situation into perspective. What if another player came and undercut this player? Why decrease the value of both entries when you could do it to just one, have the second player's item sell quick, leaving your own to be the two cheapest entries (or just the one) at a higher price.

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It's easy to find out how long things stay on the market by checking the dates the items sold and the players they sold to. If an item's sale history is all (or mostly) that day, and the buyers are more than one or two people, it's pretty simple to figure out the item is selling regularly, and at that particular price range. It's really common sense stuff.

And there was no other person selling for less than them, the cheapest sale entry before that was 60k+.

(Though interestingly, a bunch sold for more gil than his cheapest one in the last 10 minutes.)

1. Item out of stock. One of my retainers selling it for 100k, another of my retainers selling it for 90k (the price I decide I'm ok with). Someone comes along, sees a 10k difference, panics and grabs the 90k item asap before it's gone!

2. Plenty of items on demand. One of my retainers selling it for 100k (next higher entry is perhaps 101k), another of my retainers selling it for 99,999. Someone comes along, grabs the lowest by impulse and perhaps the 100k too cause.... 1k for the next is still a 1k more. Leave it to their brain to do the "logic".

3. Of course, there's people who forget they've listed the same item on their other retainer (or even same retainer cause.... scrolling), only check the lowest current price and undercut (themselves) by reflex. Or.... they just don't care.

Maybe it's not an undercut, when I know something listed for 50k will sell up to 60k, there are only a few listed and I'm going to list several stacks I tend to put different prices within the 50k-60k range, for no reason at all :p

This same topic seems to come up once a week.

It's a Free Market. If you don't like the undercut, buy the undercut product and list it higher or move onto something else while the price normalizes.

The problem is there is no regulations to whats a fair and reasonable price, like the real world. Real world markets are not a gigantic free for all like some think, its heavily regulated by government entities, with rules and stipulation, contracts, fair market values, anyone who knows anything about the housing market or stocks will know what I'm talking about. If someone "undercut" in the housing market, it would be ignored by an appraiser because its a motivated sale that doesn't reflect what a fair market value is - they are suppose to do this to keep the integrity of the housing market.

That doesn't happen in this game - there is no real market integrity, anyone can sell anything at any price. People can sell SavageAim4 for 1 gil and sell 100 of them at 1 gil if they wanted to crash the market. Realistically SE should add in minimum listing price requirements for items we know are valuable, ie can't list SavageAim4 for less then 80k, or something to that effect.

I'll undercut myself but in cases of having 2x items for slightly cheaper per piece than my 1x item I also have up.