Overflowing stupidity

The ability to see how much items are listed for is killing crafting. In FFXI you bid based on past sells, here every idiot undercuts every item that has any volume of sales until they are losing money on each synth. I ask why?

The ability for everyone to see how much items are listed for isn't "killing crafting", it's just allowing people to find what markets are or aren't profitable. If a market is profitable, people will continue to join to have a slice of the pie, eventually though enough people will join that market until profits are driven to 0 and it is no longer profitable, this is market efficiency. If a market is unprofitable, then people will leave that market until profits go back up to 0.

If you're trying to craft for an unprofitable market then it's that person who has overflowing stupidity, especially since the marketboard makes it easy for them to check the current market.

If you aren't making profit in one market, move to another. Ideally, things will have narrow profit margins.

Blind bidding is bad because it doesn't allow people to see what the actual market looks like, and no one can make proper decisions and it would hurt market efficiency and cause large price gaps.

A lot of these threads seem to be made by people who feel they are entitled to large profit margins.

A blind market stops a market board with 100 items all 1 Gil lower than the next until the real value of an item is double the going rate. I don't feel we should have huge margins but in reality there maybe 10 items worth anything since all gear is replaced instantly.

This shouldn't have been a topic about the market as much as I should have said why are crafters so greedy they undercut until they lose money.

FFXI's economy was so bad, nearly everyone engaged in gil buying at some point. Having listed prices allows undercutting, which has so far kept prices reasonable, removing the gil buying impetus for most.

I understand the pain. Any time I see a price that is stable, if I make even two of that item to sell the price drops by about half in the course of a full day. I personally don't want to have to micromanage my items on the market every hour. I don't even undercut, I just match the price of the lowest item for jewelry or gear. Its why I've given up trying to make money by selling items like I did near the start of the game.

Its just too much work, and the price ends up less than the value of even just the cost of shards often, let alone the materials to make them as well as any profit margin.

Currently BOTs disadvantage every legitimate player to a very large degree. Players who buy their gil also place a large disadvantage in addition to the BOT's.

Trying to act like the markets are working anything like a healthy real world market is so disingenuous as to give the appearance of defending RMT on the DL.

Drastic actions need to be taken, I assert that trying to treat a game world market as a IRL modern market is a fallacy.

Removing listing prices and history of sales would be more akin to a actual auction IMO.

I like seeing the prices. Playing guess-the-price made me hate the Auction house in XI. Having to go 10k for a breastplate which has sold for 10k for the last few weeks. "unable to get said item"... 11k, still unable to get it. 12k. Nope. 13k? No. 13001? "You got so-so for 13001"

I hated every single person who did that in auction house.

So glad stupid greedy people can't do that now.

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Originally Posted by Zigkid3

If you're trying to craft for an unprofitable market then it's that person who has overflowing stupidity, especially since the marketboard makes it easy for them to check the current market.
If you aren't making profit in one market, move to another. Ideally, things will have narrow profit margins.
Blind bidding is bad because it doesn't allow people to see what the actual market looks like, and no one can make proper decisions and it would hurt market efficiency and cause large price gaps.

A lot of these threads seem to be made by people who feel they are entitled to large profit margins.

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Checking market is easy. But

For finished products, People undercut far too quickly and too much, regardless of what the market for the item at the time of posting. Within an hour or 2, you find your item going from profitable to worthless. To make any profit off them, they require constant micromanaging of prices, plus a stockpile cash to buy all the stupidly price items below yours.

Its the same with Mats, but they move more quickly, or people just buy and re-list them more often.

I have read quite a few most from under-cutters on other forums, they seem to come mostly in 3 types, the Jerks(who just want to tank the market, make people lose money and read about them complaining about it) , the Stupid (who think the default price listed is the suggested market price and not the NPC buy-back price) and people in a Hurry(they just want to move the item, with no care of what they get back, even if they can dump it at a vender for more)

A market where most times you get more money by pulling the item and selling it to an NPC, is not healthy.

Though I don't see going to blind bidding as an improvement.

Maybe limit the ability reprice/relist to once a day and raise the default price to what a NPC would sell the NQ version for.

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Originally Posted by Highlanderx

For finished products, People undercut far too quickly and too much, regardless of what the market for the item at the time of posting. Within an hour or 2, you find your item going from profitable to worthless.

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That's true.
I always check which items are low in stock and sell for a good price, craft some (never do more than 3-5) and put them up.
Let's say the last 20 items sold for ~10k and there are none in stock. I put mine on for 10-12k. The next time I check, someone sells 20 pieces of same item for 6k...

Undercutting is ok to a certain degree, but why people sell so far under the normal price is beyond me.

Don't even get me started on finished products which are sold for less than the shards required to craft them.

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Originally Posted by Zigkid3

A lot of these threads seem to be made by people who feel they are entitled to large profit margins.

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Well, if I craft something to sell it, I try to get as much profit as I can.
Why else should I spend the materials I farm for anything I don't need myself.

There are things that have never made sense to me like this: peacock ore selling for 25k each, you need 9 for an ingot as well as a rose gold nugget. Now the nugget is going to cost you about 2k with all nq mats(gold ore was about 400-500 each) so we're at about 227k for this rose gold ingot in cost, nq sells for 200k hq for 250k. I love the logic that on an nq you deserve to lose money and on hq you deserve roughly 10% profit. The market is broken, I was making base relics and we were all doing well at about 20k-30k profit with materia melded in an hq, now we lose money or break even because about 2 people keep it crashed. Nobody cares that the leather workers are charging 100k for that base relic.

Crafters should be able to make 10% on nq's and 25% on harder hq's. You gotta pay to be lazy.

I'll undercut during the levelling process. Not to such an extent that I'd get less money than an npc would pay me for the item. But if it means getting it out of my inventory then I'm good to sell it for cheap. Ideally I'll make a profit, but some people are just greedy. They want massive amounts of gil for something easily crafted. Nope. If its easy to craft then everyone will do it and the price will be shit.

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Originally Posted by Ricon

The ability to see how much items are listed for is killing crafting. In FFXI you bid based on past sells, here every idiot undercuts every item that has any volume of sales until they are losing money on each synth. I ask why?

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Hi,

I think the way the system is currently designed allows for more transparency within the economy and that is a good thing. You are going to have under-cutters in this system but you will have them in your bid system in FFXI as well. To demonstrate, lets use the following example (please note the numbers are exaggerated to show variance but the concepts behind still remain). Since we are using FFXI as an example, I'll use an item from that game (Krakken Club). Lets have 4 sellers named Larry, Curly, Mo, and Fred (Fred will play the part of the evil under-cutter). Based on the system can see that the Krakken Club is being sold for at a consistent basis of say 1mm gil the last 8 times. So, lets remove the "veil" and show the prices of our four sellers:

Larry - 1,000,000.00
Curly - 1,010,000.00
Mo - 995,000.00
Fred - 600,000.00

Now, I was going to buy a Krakken Club. I won't assume that the going rate is 1mm (maybe it is just me, but I will put in a bid at 500k, i will not "win" so I will up the bid to 650k. Now, lo-and-behold, I just won a Krakken Club for 650k (I am happy and I go about my merry way telling my friends to search and try to bid in that price range). Word will spread to Larry, Curly, and Mo and they will panic and reduce their price because they want their Krakken Club to sell.

Now, Fred has jsut de-valued the Krakken Club by 35%. By making the market system a blind bidding you really have not reduced the undercutting. That will always be there regardless of what you try.

This rampant undercutting is just a SYMPTOM of the underlying problem which is the rampant botting (both mob bots like the ones that farm fleece and Diremite Webs and the mining/logging bots). This is the real problem and until this is resolved the market is FUBAR'd.

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Originally Posted by Ricon

There are things that have never made sense to me like this: peacock ore selling for 25k each, you need 9 for an ingot as well as a rose gold nugget. Now the nugget is going to cost you about 2k with all nq mats(gold ore was about 400-500 each) so we're at about 227k for this rose gold ingot in cost, nq sells for 200k hq for 250k. I love the logic that on an nq you deserve to lose money and on hq you deserve roughly 10% profit. The market is broken, I was making base relics and we were all doing well at about 20k-30k profit with materia melded in an hq, now we lose money or break even because about 2 people keep it crashed. Nobody cares that the leather workers are charging 100k for that base relic.

Crafters should be able to make 10% on nq's and 25% on harder hq's. You gotta pay to be lazy.

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Here I think you are making one huge assumption. The assumption is that you are buying everything from the market boards. For me at least I run out and gather/kill most of the raw mats. So all that is lost for me is the time spent doing this process. To which, if I feel my time that I took to gather these mats is worth 200k, who is to question that?

An example, I tried to make a Weaver AF cap fr the first time (I failed because I didn't realize I needed more durability than I had for careful synthts, so that's all my fault). I went out and farmed the fleece for the woolen cloth, harvested the Crawler Cocoons for the Twinthread, and Logged the trees for my Chocobo Feather. Now if I had succeeded, I can/will sell that for what ever I feel and if I am strapped for cash, i will "fire sale" that crap stuff off.

The other thing is, you can wait the market out. I sell a lot of dye. I have a set price for the dye, and I put it up at that price all the time. Eventually, it sells, because it's a commodity people want, and there are times when my price is the lowest on the board, even though it's not the lowest when I put it up. If you really feel that your three-handled family gradunza is worth a million gil per handle, even though it's only selling for 20 gil per handle, put it up at that price and see... it may be that someone is desperate for a gradunza at the time they're looking, and yours is the only one on the board.

Or it may not.

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Originally Posted by Ricon

Snip Snip

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If you farmed the items all is profit because you didn't buy anything to make this item. Yes I know there is the time factor but you can sold 3 hours at the price that you want.
And BTW I don't know in your servers but in mine the philo items are around 18-20k

If you want to make money crafting, just just make items people use for triple turn in levequest (HQ of course). I see hardly any of these selling for bad prices, and if you want a quicker turn around shout and make them for people right on the spot leveling a craft, have them pay for the mats you just make the items and charge a little less then board prices.

The problem with the crafting market is there is no true overhead. In real life, manufacturing businesses have huge costs to produce their products, then they price their products to be competitive with other manufacturers while maintaining at least some profit margin. And a 5% profit over cost is usually doing pretty well. But no smart business is going to price their products at a loss, so undercutting is used in limitation.

In this game, if a person chooses to level several gathering/crafting classes, they can make anything for practically no cost to them. So they can take an item that would normally be priced at $2000 gil and sell it for $25, because it didn't even cost them that much to make. That's what I see as being the problem.

BTW, there can be no blind market, because everyone has access to the marked board to make purchases, and then people can see what others are pricing. It may be a little more work than having the prices right in your retainer, but determined sellers will do it.

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Originally Posted by Brises

In this game, if a person chooses to level several gathering/crafting classes, they can make anything for practically no cost to them. So they can take an item that would normally be priced at $2000 gil and sell it for $25, because it didn't even cost them that much to make. That's what I see as being the problem.

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This is not a problem at all... if that person has the tools to gather all the ingredients and make the item. And after that he evaluate that the price is 25 and not 2000... Well I think that is pretty clear that is the real value of that item because all the 25 Gil are profits.

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Originally Posted by Leon_Stormrage

This is not a problem at all... if that person has the tools to gather all the ingredients and make the item. And after that he evaluate that the price is 25 and not 2000... Well I think that is pretty clear that is the real value of that item because all the 25 Gil are profits.

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But that would harm the market, because if the overall economy settled on prices that low, there would be no reason to sell anything. I can make far more gil just doing tradeleves. People would be crafting only gear they need for their own classes and friends.

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Originally Posted by Brises

But that would harm the market, because if the overall economy settled on prices that low, there would be no reason to sell anything. I can make far more gil just doing tradeleves. People would be crafting only gear they need for their own classes and friends.

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No one is going to sell his time for not profit, but if you have all the tools to craft something free, you can sell it at the price that you want, or that you think that is profitable for the time wasted on it. So it is not a problem, the problem are the farming bots...

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Originally Posted by Darkwerk

Removing listing prices and history of sales would be more akin to a actual auction IMO.

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Its a market board, not an auction. I'm selling this item at "X" price.

Its not like an actual auction,where you expect your sales based on how much people are willing to bid before "Y" time expires.

A lot of people get confused about the auction house when in truth it is just a market board. FF14 ARR has called it the correct thing. It is just a market board, not an Auction. WoW calls it a AH but in truth, its just a market board as well.

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Originally Posted by Xystic

Its a market board, not an auction. I'm selling this item at "X" price.

Its not like an actual auction,where you expect your sales based on how much people are willing to bid before "Y" time expires.

A lot of people get confused about the auction house when in truth it is just a market board. FF14 ARR has called it the correct thing. It is just a market board, not an Auction. WoW calls it a AH but in truth, its just a market board as well.

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I agree, I just think it should be more auction "like". I would not be completely against an actual auction being in game. However i'm not sure how it would be implemented best .

I knew the "if you farm everything you can name the price" would come up and my only answer is this. If market price for materials is 200,000 gil and you get everything free by farming then why not earn 250,000 gil on an hq and let the mat buyers make their 50k profit too.

I almost never do anything outside of my FC because people are crazy. Off topic I had an off tank in Ifrit HM that didn't know what ability was stun on his pld. Some crafters are out of their minds much like him.

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Originally Posted by Ricon

I knew the "if you farm everything you can name the price" would come up and my only answer is this. If market price for materials is 200,000 gil and you get everything free by farming then why not earn 250,000 gil on an hq and let the mat buyers make their 50k profit too.

I almost never do anything outside of my FC because people are crazy. Off topic I had an off tank in Ifrit HM that didn't know what ability was stun on his pld. Some crafters are out of their minds much like him.

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I'm a little confused by the first part, please correct me if I'm wrong.

So what your saying is if I farm the materials which are equivalent of 200k, I should let the crafters buy the materials at 200k in total value and let them make the HQ item and sell it for 250k. This is what your trying to get through correct?

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Originally Posted by Xystic

I'm a little confused by the first part, please correct me if I'm wrong.

So what your saying is if I farm the materials which are equivalent of 200k, I should let the crafters buy the materials at 200k in total value and let them make the HQ item and sell it for 250k. This is what your trying to get through correct?

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Lol, yes sadly you are right.
I don't understand why the people complain about the people that farm his own materials and sell the items cheaper.
Undercut is one thing but, if you farmed all the items and want to sell it 1k cheaper is your right, you should decide how many your time worth

Farm the items > then craft = pure profit (minus crystals, but you can farm those too). This seems very hard for people to grasp.

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Originally Posted by Yukonjack

Farm the items > then craft = pure profit (minus crystals, but you can farm those too). This seems very hard for people to grasp.

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This is what I was getting at. Why would you lower your price when you could make full value? You feel that because you farmed the mats then crafted the item yours is worth less than mine when I was lazy and bought the mats? You deserve the full 250k profit where as my lazy self only deserves 50k profit because I bought my mats.

My only want is for a more unified crafting community with stable prices and decent profit for everyone but that's impossible currently because most people are selfish d-bags that can't stand to see anyone do as well as them.

You lower your price so that its competitive. If you don't lower your price you face the risks of it not selling at all and when you do finally decide to lower it later, you have a possibility of a larger loss then when you could have lowered it earlier.

If everyone put up their mats at 200k, who would you buy from. The answer is, it wouldn't matter who you bought it from, they are all the same price. However to the seller, thats a problem. Because everyone is selling it at 200k, the consumer can choose anyone to buy from and it will be all the same. It will all be based on RNG, if even, for the seller. There is a good chance you may never sell your mats for 200k.

Yet another post whining about undercutting.

The truth is that there are very few "rare" items in this game. Those items have low supply and will remain at high prices. The reason other items get undercut and devalued is because there are lots of crafters, tons of materials, and HQs are not hard to make. So why do people undercut? Why do you see prices plummet?

Because crafted items are all common. High prices on crafted items are just a result of new servers or supply that hasn't caught up to demand. Crafters can't really make anything "special" it is all the same stuff... and a lot of it is easily replaced by vendor/quest stuff.

It was never worth those ridiculous prices.

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Originally Posted by Yukonjack

Farm the items > then craft = pure profit (minus crystals, but you can farm those too). This seems very hard for people to grasp.

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Lets say mats are worth and sell for 200k.

Player 1 buys these mats and crafts their item, they list it at 250k. (The going rate)

Player 2 farms his own mats and crafted the same item and lists it at 150k.

Player 2 is in effect losing 50k when it sells, as he would have got 200k just from selling the mats.

It may be "pure profit", but it's still 50k less profit than he would have had from selling the mats and 100k less than has he undercut by small amounts.


It's up to Player 2 what he does, but he's still daft for doing it xD

From a personal PoV I don't care much about this happening, I sold enough when few others were selling them.

But meanwhile player 1 is gaining 50k player 2 is gaining 150k and selling it easier...

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Originally Posted by Leon_Stormrage

But meanwhile player 1 is gaining 50k player 2 is gaining 150k and selling it easier...

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The mats themselves sell faster than the crafted 2 star items, so player 2 would in effect be paying 50k to sell his stuff slower.

In terms of selling easier, no 2 star stuff on Odin sells very fast, price has little effect on the rate these things sell, as long as they are sensibility priced.

So a 2 star 9 mat item on my server priced at 300k would sell at about the same speed as if it were priced at 200k.

in some cases its better to sell for less if it increases your inventory turnover rate.
Say someone can gain a net profit of 20k at price point A, or or gain a net profit of 30k at price point B. Price point B is higher which will result in getting 10K more out of the sale but it'll sell less often.
Say after 24 hours, at price A you were able to gain 20k for each sale and sold 5, so 100k total. In the same amount of time of 24 hours if you sold at price B and gained 30k each you may only sell 3 and gain a total of 90k.
So in 24 hours, it was better to sell at a lower price and gain less profit per item, but you sold a lot more in the same time frame.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

Lets say mats are worth and sell for 200k.

...Player 2 farms his own mats and crafted the same item and lists it at 150k.

Player 2 is in effect losing 50k when it sells, as he would have got 200k just from selling the mats.

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That's only relevant if selling the raw mats would have gotten him what he wanted. If gil is the only motivation, then yes, he could have gotten more gil by selling the mats. Doing so, however, would mean he gets no crafting XP. A lot of the items that get sold on the market boards are the by-products of leveling crafting, and any gil they may or may not make is secondary. In that case, the goal isn't to maximize the amount of gil, but to maximize the speed at which they sell, so you can free up inventory space for making more items.


Overall, I think ApolloGenX got it right, with:

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

It was never worth those ridiculous prices.

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Just because someone overpaid more for mats than a finished product is reasonably worth, doesn't mean that everyone else needs to artificially jack up the prices of the finished products in order to match.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

That's only relevant if selling the raw mats would have gotten him what he wanted. If gil is the only motivation, then yes, he could have gotten more gil by selling the mats. Doing so, however, would mean he gets no crafting XP. A lot of the items that get sold on the market boards are the by-products of leveling crafting, and any gil they may or may not make is secondary. In that case, the goal isn't to maximize the amount of gil, but to maximize the speed at which they sell, so you can free up inventory space for making more items.

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You obviously know little about crafting, no non-50's would even be trying to craft 2 star items. (Or have the stats to even try)

For other lower level items, yeah you are probably correct, but that's not what I was talking about.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

You obviously know little about crafting, no non-50's would even be trying to craft 2 star items. (Or have the stats to even try)

For other lower level items, yeah you are probably correct, but that's not what I was talking about.

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But this thread isn't discussing 2 star items, at least not specifically. It's discussing how the market works in general for crafted items. (You're the only one here to have even mentioned 2 star items, and that sounded more like an example than an indication of the scope of the discussion.)

For levels 1-49, people buying mats are presumably those who want to level their crafting, or perhaps just craft something for their own use, when they don't feel like taking the time to do their own gathering as well. They'll often be willing to pay a premium for that convienience by spending more on the materials than the finished products are worth.

At level 50 the incentive changes, as you no longer need crafting XP, but the economics aren't all that different. Mats still tend to be expensive because there's still relatively fewer people taking the time to gather them. For some players, that doesn't matter. They still want the convienience of being able to craft without gathering so they can make gear for themselves or their friends. For those trying to make a profit at it, however, they're going to have a hard time doing so if they're paying a premium for the convienience of avoiding the gathering part of crafting.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

But this thread isn't discussing 2 star items, at least not specifically. It's discussing how the market works in general for crafted items. (You're the only one here to have even mentioned 2 star items, and that sounded more like an example than an indication of the scope of the discussion.)

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This thread has been discussing 2 star crafts since post#10 and most of the following posts have been referring them and using them for examples.

I may have been the first to use the term "2 star", but everyone else knew those were the items being referred to.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

This thread has been discussing 2 star crafts since post#10 and most of the following posts have been referring them and using them for examples.

I may have been the first to use the term "2 star", but everyone else knew those were the items being referred to.

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Well, there it's definitely just an example. The topic is broader than that. Don't get so tunnel-visioned that you can't see when an issue is broader than just the little piece of it you're looking at. The fact that I'm looking at the issue from a different perspective is part of why I could see points that you were missing.

Hi,

I do not know where we got off topic here in reference to the OP's topic. We are talking about having a blind bidding system as they did in FFXI. IMHO, it doesn't solve the problem and only tries to mask it. Please see my post (its #12 in the thread)

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Originally Posted by Ricon

This is what I was getting at. Why would you lower your price when you could make full value? You feel that because you farmed the mats then crafted the item yours is worth less than mine when I was lazy and bought the mats? You deserve the full 250k profit where as my lazy self only deserves 50k profit because I bought my mats.

My only want is for a more unified crafting community with stable prices and decent profit for everyone but that's impossible currently because most people are selfish d-bags that can't stand to see anyone do as well as them.

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To Ricon, I ask "why not?" I do not know what your goals are, but when I put crap stuff on the market, I want the product to move and collect my gil as quick as i can. To me, as a person who farms everything, my CoGS (Cost of Goods Sold) are next to nil except for the time it took me to farm the mats. As a merchant, my goal is to sell first and sell it fast. I want to move more product and if i can do that cheaper than you and still make more profit than you, i can and I will. This is a basic business model.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

Lets say mats are worth and sell for 200k.

Player 1 buys these mats and crafts their item, they list it at 250k. (The going rate)

Player 2 farms his own mats and crafted the same item and lists it at 150k.

Player 2 is in effect losing 50k when it sells, as he would have got 200k just from selling the mats.

It may be "pure profit", but it's still 50k less profit than he would have had from selling the mats and 100k less than has he undercut by small amounts.


It's up to Player 2 what he does, but he's still daft for doing it xD

From a personal PoV I don't care much about this happening, I sold enough when few others were selling them.

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To Scarebearz, I ask the following. If I know my product at 150k will sell in 2 hours vs 2 days at the "going" price of 250k, why would i not sell it? To me, even if the person buying it, is just going to "flip" it, I could care less because I have made my money and have moved on. As the great quote from The Godfather: Part III says, "It's not personal, its business."

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Originally Posted by Leon_Stormrage

But meanwhile player 1 is gaining 50k player 2 is gaining 150k and selling it easier...

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+1

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

The mats themselves sell faster than the crafted 2 star items, so player 2 would in effect be paying 50k to sell his stuff slower.

In terms of selling easier, no 2 star stuff on Odin sells very fast, price has little effect on the rate these things sell, as long as they are sensibility priced.

So a 2 star 9 mat item on my server priced at 300k would sell at about the same speed as if it were priced at 200k.

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This is not always the case, there are markets of both mats and fully finished products that sell faster than others. It is upto the seller to find these "niche" markets and take advantage of the demand before everyone else and get out when your "niche" market becomes flooded with sellers. This is plain vanilla business strategy.

To your sentence regarding "sensibility priced," I am unsure how an item can be "sensibility priced." Price is dictated by demand. As demand rises price goes up. As a business person, you need to find these markets in demand and exploit them before everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

Lets say mats are worth and sell for 200k.

Player 1 buys these mats and crafts their item, they list it at 250k. (The going rate)

Player 2 farms his own mats and crafted the same item and lists it at 150k.

Player 2 is in effect losing 50k when it sells, as he would have got 200k just from selling the mats.

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That's only relevant if selling the raw mats would have gotten him what he wanted. If gil is the only motivation, then yes, he could have gotten more gil by selling the mats. Doing so, however, would mean he gets no crafting XP. A lot of the items that get sold on the market boards are the by-products of leveling crafting, and any gil they may or may not make is secondary. In that case, the goal isn't to maximize the amount of gil, but to maximize the speed at which they sell, so you can free up inventory space for making more items.


Overall, I think ApolloGenX got it right, with:

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

It was never worth those ridiculous prices.

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Just because someone overpaid more for mats than a finished product is reasonably worth, doesn't mean that everyone else needs to artificially jack up the prices of the finished products in order to match.

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Isn't the point of selling on the MB to make gil? The crafting leves give far better exp/hr than just straight grinding.

Also, from what i've seen, by-products of crafting are generally alot lower than other mats because everyone is selling it and everyone wants their stuff to sell for gil so that they move on to the next item. This is further proof that the MB is there for gil.

In regards to ApolloGenX quote, an item is worth what people are willing to pay. Also, people need to add some "cost" for the "service" of creating said product. "Ridiculous" is a subjective term :)

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

You obviously know little about crafting, no non-50's would even be trying to craft 2 star items. (Or have the stats to even try)

For other lower level items, yeah you are probably correct, but that's not what I was talking about.

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But this thread isn't discussing 2 star items, at least not specifically. It's discussing how the market works in general for crafted items. (You're the only one here to have even mentioned 2 star items, and that sounded more like an example than an indication of the scope of the discussion.)

For levels 1-49, people buying mats are presumably those who want to level their crafting, or perhaps just craft something for their own use, when they don't feel like taking the time to do their own gathering as well. They'll often be willing to pay a premium for that convenience by spending more on the materials than the finished products are worth.

At level 50 the incentive changes, as you no longer need crafting XP, but the economics aren't all that different. Mats still tend to be expensive because there's still relatively fewer people taking the time to gather them. For some players, that doesn't matter. They still want the convenience of being able to craft without gathering so they can make gear for themselves or their friends. For those trying to make a profit at it, however, they're going to have a hard time doing so if they're paying a premium for the convenience of avoiding the gathering part of crafting.

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You are right, for 1-49 you are usually buying mats to skill up crafts, these products will generally have an equilibrium. There will be both a steady supply and steady demand. But, at the same time there will be mats that are in low supply therefore you pay a premium, in both price and quantity (remember you cant buy from stacks).

Also, there are always going to be "profit centers" that can be exploited, it's just the matter of finding them. For example, I recently had a run where I was resupplying some +1 products pretty much every 5 mins because they were selling like hotcakes. I do not know why, but the "market" soon dried up and the product is selling at their normal rate and price. People just have to keep their eye out.



Now circling back to the OPs quote. All markets you will have this. By making the current system a "blind" all you are doing is removing transparency from the market. I am a big proponent for market transparency.

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Originally Posted by Wulfies

To Scarebearz, I ask the following. If I know my product at 150k will sell in 2 hours vs 2 days at the "going" price of 250k, why would i not sell it? To me, even if the person buying it, is just going to "flip" it, I could care less because I have made my money and have moved on. As the great quote from The Godfather: Part III says, "It's not personal, its business."

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You are missing the point of that example:

Tomb mats do sell a lot faster than crafted items.

In the example the mats total market value was 200k, the finished item undercut to 150k.

Regardless of if the 150k finished item sells faster than the other crafter's 250k item, the undercutter is still in effect losing 50k easy profit, by not just selling the mats.

The fact he farmed all the mats himself is irrelevant, while the 150k may be "pure profit", it's still a minimum 50k loss on the gil potential and a senseless move on his part.

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Originally Posted by Wulfies

To your sentence regarding "sensibility priced," I am unsure how an item can be "sensibility priced." Price is dictated by demand. As demand rises price goes up.

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Demand is not the only influencing factor on prices.

If an item is overpriced, it will not sell regardless of the demand.

E.g. No wind shards on the market, so someone puts them up for 100000 gil each, they will be high in demand, but nobody would pay that for them.