Trying to understand player behavour with MB & MSQ dungeons

Hope this is the right place for this, but I'm trying to understand some players behavours regarding both marketboards as well as the lvl 50 MSQ duneons.

1. MSQ dungeons "skipping" cutscenes.

Not a point about whether they should or shouldn't be skippable, I know this is a touchy issue. Curious as to why some people do what they do to still skip cutscene's in the lvl 50 MSQ queue dungeon.

I'm curious, because I've timed it... and when it happens it shortens the run by 2-3 minutes generally (and this with groups that are clearing the fights fairly quickly). I honestly don't see the point in going to the length's they do to save 2-3 minutes.

2. Marketboard selling under merchant prices.

I can understand undercutting people (and no, I'm not asking this because I've been undercut lol), even extreme undercutting... heck, even the ppl who sell at the auto-price which is merchant price. What I don't understand is why ppl would sell a significant amount of stuff under the amount they'd make selling to a npc?

IE. Say an item sells to a npc merchant for 200 gill, they put it up on the MB for 100 gil. That's a complete loss... and I'm not talking about 1-2 items, I'm talking about lots of 20-99 in multiple batches.

Are these bots/ppl trying to kill the market for these items so they can then control them? ie majorly undercut, then when ppl stop selling because no profit... yank the price up to high level's... and hope the profit from doing this is greater than the profit if they'd just sold 'at market level'?

1. If you get a bunch of people it's more than 2-3 mins. Like a LOT more
2. Cuz I want gil now

if you see people selling that far before npc price, buy and npc it yourself for profit! d(^_^d)

most people probably dont bother to look at npc price.

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Originally Posted by MPK

2. Cuz I want gil now

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That makes no sense. Your retainer can act as a vendor, you can sell items to them directly at vendor prices, and you have to use your retainers to sell it on the marketboard.

2. Charity listings while also being eager to get rid of the respective item.
Selling an item to a NPC vendor essentially deletes said item from the game, and sometimes I'd rather take a loss and see if I can sell common items to anyone who may need them.

On that note, Buying vendor distributed items en masse to resell for profit is generally ineffective.
You may get lucky and profit off of ignorant players who don't read vendor prices, but odds are you'll just end up trying to rid yourself of items you don't want or need.

Back when they were legitimately skippable, not watching cutscenes would take off half an hour if not more to the run.

1. High risk. Low gain. If you're talking about the DC method, that is strictly prohibited and well... they like to gamble I guess. I think someone did some math on this that showed something like all DPS players would have to do it, otherwise virtually no time is shaved off. Whatever time is lessened (which is minuscule) is absorbed from the first encounter with Ultima Weapon because of his invulnerability at the beginning of the fight. This just leaves the second encounter with UW and Lahabrea. Each of whom cannot be burned down before everyone else loads in... after all the cutscenes.

2. Equally as idiotic or ignorant. These players either don't care or don't know that their retainer can take care of the transaction right there and then. It's crazy too because even if you do put it up for sale, your retainer starts the default price at its vendor selling price. So they are deliberately taking an extra step to even lower the cost.

So yeah. Some loons out there man. Not much else I can say about it.

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Originally Posted by Kamatsu

Hope this is the right place for this, but I'm trying to understand some players behavours regarding both marketboards as well as the lvl 50 MSQ duneons.

1. MSQ dungeons "skipping" cutscenes.

Not a point about whether they should or shouldn't be skippable, I know this is a touchy issue. Curious as to why some people do what they do to still skip cutscene's in the lvl 50 MSQ queue dungeon.

I'm curious, because I've timed it... and when it happens it shortens the run by 2-3 minutes generally (and this with groups that are clearing the fights fairly quickly). I honestly don't see the point in going to the length's they do to save 2-3 minutes.

2. Marketboard selling under merchant prices.

I can understand undercutting people (and no, I'm not asking this because I've been undercut lol), even extreme undercutting... heck, even the ppl who sell at the auto-price which is merchant price. What I don't understand is why ppl would sell a significant amount of stuff under the amount they'd make selling to a npc?

IE. Say an item sells to a npc merchant for 200 gill, they put it up on the MB for 100 gil. That's a complete loss... and I'm not talking about 1-2 items, I'm talking about lots of 20-99 in multiple batches.

Are these bots/ppl trying to kill the market for these items so they can then control them? ie majorly undercut, then when ppl stop selling because no profit... yank the price up to high level's... and hope the profit from doing this is greater than the profit if they'd just sold 'at market level'?

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The real cutscene skippers are shaving off far more than a couple of minutes. One of my alts was in a Praetorium group with 3 players cutscene skipping and it took 12 minutes off the usual clear time for me as soneone who was watching the cutscenes. Those 3 players had killed Lahabrea before the second Ultima Weapon cutscene had even finished so for them it shaved probably close to 20 minutes off the instance. It was a miserable experience when the rest of the group was denied the chance to participate in the fighting.

Merchant prices are random prices picked by SE and have nothing to do with free market values which are influenced by many things. There are a considerable number of items I can make for fair less than the random price SE picked. By pricing under the merchant price, I can get you to buy that item from me instead of you going to the merchant to buy it. I'm still profiting from the sale.

If you don't like the price others are setting for an item, don't sell that item. Sell something else.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

By pricing under the merchant price, I can get you to buy that item from me instead of you going to the merchant to buy it. I'm still profiting from the sale.

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Except you're not really? You're losing profit by not selling the thing you crafted for below vendor price directly to an NPC. I understand charitable people that just want to help others by listing items below vendor price, but that is literally the only logical reason to do it. If you think you're somehow making more money by selling something below vendor price....I uh...got no words.

EDIT: Re-re-reading your post I think you are confusing the price the NPC is selling the item for the price we sell it back to them. That is what is being referred to here.

Thank you for the replies.

1. I can see that if enough people are skipping it could take off quite a bit of time to kill the bosses fast. However that either relies on luck that enough people will do that, or you've queued in a big enough group to do that. When I come across someone doing whatever they do to skip cutscenes, I've only come across a max of 2 ppl doing so. Guess I've been unlucky/lucky depending on how you view it

2. I don't think it can be a 'lazy' choice to list items under the npc merchant price - isn't the default MB price set to the amount you'd get by selling to an npc merchant? Thus they would have to intentionally change the price to be lower than that... at which point they are making a loss.

I guess it could be "charity" selling - people willing to take a loss to try and get items at a cheaper price to people.

And I do sell or not sell items on MB depending on what the prices are - for those that are selling under npc merchant buying price, I've been holding on or just merchanting them.
Good suggestion to buy them... hadn't thought of that. Make a small profit on them. lol

Just remember that skipping MSQ cutscenes is against the ToS and can be reported. The cutscenes are here to give people a chance to get the whole experience. For that you get a lot of exp and other stuff. Doing "magic" (as someone ones called it) to skip them and then end the dungeon faster is bad for those that dont because they will get cutscene after cutscene with no fights while the cheaters will get their higher rewards..

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Originally Posted by Kamatsu

...an item sells to a npc merchant for 200 gill, they put it up on the MB for 100 gil. That's a complete loss...

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Nope, that is assured more Gil for me buying from the board and selling to npc. Happens with higher priced items too, and I'm totally fine with it!

Especially with people that forgot to add one '0' at the end...

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Originally Posted by Gemina

2. Equally as idiotic or ignorant. These players either don't care or don't know that their retainer can take care of the transaction right there and then.

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Well, that's a bold thing to say. It's not always about the gil.

Before I got all my crafters to 80, I would craft 30 HQ level 1 items per week for the challenge log. I mean, it's free exp for like 5 minutes of effort. But then what do I do with the 30 HQ iron ingots or whatever that I just made?

I make sure that somebody else uses them, rather than deleting them. I give them away. And the MB doesn't allow zero-gil listings.

Sue me.

As a new player that just hit 50, the questline requires you to run these. Not wanting to be the low person that held everyone back, I was prepared to skip the scenes, if necessary. It was a relief when I saw that you couldn't skip them. There was some people in chat wishing the scenes could be skipped but the most geared person in the group spoke up and said it's unfair to new players. It left the impression that if I'm in that situation, I'll gladly watch them again so a new player can experience it.

Yeah I occasionally put stuff on the MB for really low prices. My intent is to give new/lower level players a chance to buy gear or mats on the cheap.

I'd probably do it more if I knew that new players (or at least someone that's going to use it) are the ones buying the gear instead of some MB capitalist that's just reselling it at a higher price.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Nope, that is assured more Gil for me buying from the board and selling to npc. Happens with higher priced items too, and I'm totally fine with it!
Especially with people that forgot to add one '0' at the end...

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I'm talking about the seller - it's a complete loss for them, as they are selling it for less than they'd make selling to an npc merchant, as well as paying tax on the sale so even less!
Obviously for ppl who buy it and sell to an npc or relist it, it'll be profit for them.

As for Alleo's comment - indeed, it's why I've not done it. Considering the times I've come across it being done... hasn't generally speed things up, I just never saw the point (once cutscene's were unskippable) to doing so... risk your account being suspended to save a few minutes? Pffft.

1. It's like when you're driving down the road and somebody speeds past you, and then at the next stoplight you're right behind them. Some people just gotta go fast even when it's not actually that much more fast.

2. I have no idea why this happens, I can only assume it's new/uninformed players selling things.

Because some people think the MSQ cutscenes are garbage and they were bribed to attend that roulette for the rewards. As long as the rewards persist, the skipping won't stop. If the rewards are removed, MSQ instantly becomes the least popular roulette. Square loses either way due to their poor upkeep of this content. You can't control them due to the incentives.

As for people undercutting, they're doing what they want because they want to. You don't need to understand them; they do what they want. You have no control over them.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Because some people think the MSQ cutscenes are garbage and they were bribed to attend that roulette for the rewards. As long as the rewards persist, the skipping won't stop. If the rewards are removed, MSQ instantly becomes the least popular roulette. Square loses either way due to their poor upkeep of this content. You can't control them due to the incentives.

As for people undercutting, they're doing what they want because they want to. You don't need to understand them; they do what they want. You have no control over them.

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the op literally said "im not talking about undercutting"

The op is referring to someone selling an item on the Marketboard for 100gil when they can turn around and sell it to a vendor for 200gil instead. The OP is questioning why people do this. To which someone already posted its pretty dumb lol (i mean lets face it, it is lol)

When you first post an item and you see the default vendor price the listings are probably higher. When you see the price has dropped and you pick a new price you might not reconfirm the vendor price and just drop it. It takes about 30 to 45 mins to go through all MB listings check current prices and check vendor price. The system is not very user friendly. Anyone who says it shouldn't take that long one only has a few listings or two isn't checking prices very well IE selling for below vendor price.



I also highly doubt you are seeing stacks of 99 below vendor price.They had to farm 99 of those that took a little effort. But venture items that also seem quite common took almost minimal effort and less concern over the actual profit ratio. The sky gear that vendors for 1k can go below 500 gil. It is worthless to desynth it is worthless to wear and retainers bring a lot of it back.


What I would like to see is the below vendor stuff all bought up and cleared off the board. The board has enough listings as it is. And no I don't mean the cheaters that use third party tools that scan MBs and buy up everything to vendor it. That is the only type of cheating I haven't seen in this game. Maybe because the system is so slow to interface with.

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Originally Posted by Kamatsu

I'm talking about the seller - it's a complete loss for them, as they are selling it for less than they'd make selling to an npc merchant, as well as paying tax on the sale so even less!

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Can only speak for me but if I don't need/want an item I just throw it out on the MB and yes I often do it below vendor price. To me gil is not something that matters all that much. I have ≈40milion gil and I haven't spent any (except on teleports) for almost a year now. I see it as a win-win situation. Yes I get less gil but on the other hand someone else might need that item and if that makes someone happy I'm perfectly fine with making a little less profit.Still better than deleting it if you ask me.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

When you first post an item and you see the default vendor price the listings are probably higher. When you see the price has dropped and you pick a new price you might not reconfirm the vendor price and just drop it. It takes about 30 to 45 mins to go through all MB listings check current prices and check vendor price. The system is not very user friendly. Anyone who says it shouldn't take that long one only has a few listings or two isn't checking prices very well IE selling for below vendor price.

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The vendor price is listed directly on the item information though. You don't need to go back to check.

I think a large portion of badly-priced marketboard items are because people don't understand that the initial price is the sell-to-NPC price and not a recommended starting price. And then people try to undercut all the other people that put their items up at that not-actually-recommended price...

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

The sky gear that vendors for 1k can go below 500 gil. It is worthless to desynth it is worthless to wear and retainers bring a lot of it back.

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The Sky Rat gear is actually pretty good to pick up if you've just hit Lv60, especially if you don't have enough tomes or access to Idyllshire yet. It's cheap and it has the same stats as early Stormblood gear.

I've made a few glamours with it too. Mostly the gloves and boots.

Sky Pirate gear is even better for glamour, and far cheaper than the replica items if you want to use it for its designated class.

Dirt-cheap Sky Rat gear was fantastic for quickly leveling desynth skill.

I see people sell Materia, escpecially Demimateria way below vendor price everyday. Even if counting in market tax you can make a lot of easy profit by just buying it in bulk and selling it to the NPC right next to the market board. You can see at a glance how much an item is worth when selling it to the NPC so it's basically zero effort.
But just like visiting another server to save 500k on an item people generally don't bother with any sort of extra effort even if it is well worth the time spent. Same with people buying mats you can get at NPCs. Yak Milk, Linen Yarn/ Cloth etc. are famous examples for items that are generally sold for 5-10x the vendor price because people don't want to look for the NPC even if they need large amounts.

Laziness is a thing. :)

2. I tried to farm one of the DoL achievements, which involves gathering thousands of items. I had over 200 of 1 item not useful to me, so I put it up in bulk because it's /some/ profit without any risk of undercutting. No cost to me but time.

1) I skip CS in hopes I get that one group that also does it, generally I do not lose much of anything doing so.

2) Can only speak for myself but often on the weekends I put expensive and popular glam items for 1000gil just for shits and giggles. No real reason behind it.

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Originally Posted by Awha

I skip CS in hopes I get that one group that also does it, generally I do not lose much of anything doing so.

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You...you just openly admitted to using an exploit on the public forum.

Yikes.

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Originally Posted by DumdogsWorld

You...you just openly admitted to using an exploit on the public forum.

Yikes.

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Uh, if i remember correctly all you do is relog to skip the cutscene. Technically, that is not an "Exploit". Personally they should make two separate roulette for the 50 MSQ where it divides players who want to watch cutscenes as opposed to those who don't want to.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Uh, if i remember correctly all you do is relog to skip the cutscene. Technically, that is not an "Exploit". Personally they should make two separate roulette for the 50 MSQ where it divides players who want to watch cutscenes as opposed to those who don't want to.

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You'd get sprouts waiting in even longer ques while the veterans/sprouts who don't want to watch cutscenes get shorter ques. Then the ONLY way to watch the cutscenes is to convince 7 other people to que with you or go back later in an unsync run on your own time to watch them all after you've gone through more of the MSQ.

I have seen the skipping cutscenes in MSQ reduces the time of the instance by 10 minutes.

As to the second point. People are just flat lazy, or they are doing a generous thing for the community.

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Originally Posted by DumdogsWorld

You...you just openly admitted to using an exploit on the public forum.

Yikes.

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It may be considered an exploit but it seems like a fairly harmless one in my opinion, and if SE wants to take action against my account because of it so be it, do not lose much either way.

In the end, I do not see myself giving myself an advantage over others, nor am I using it with malicious intent. Only thing I am doing is making use of a flaw within SE system.

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Originally Posted by MPK

2. Cuz I want gil now

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This is stupid(the mentality) because I've run into this crap in FFXI with crystals and stuff. Folks just kept on undercutting and undercutting and UNDERCUTTING because they want THEIRS to sell RIGHT FREAKING NOW so much that it crashes that item's marker and you would actually profit more by selling it to a vendor..

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

This is stupid(the mentality) because I've run into this crap in FFXI with crystals and stuff. Folks just kept on undercutting and undercutting and UNDERCUTTING because they want THEIRS to sell RIGHT FREAKING NOW so much that it crashes that item's marker and you would actually profit more by selling it to a vendor..

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I mean it makes sense if the person has the desire to crash the market, especially when it generally annoys others. I could only imagine it is oddly satisfying to know that ones actions lead to a crash in a certain market, especially when one may have so much gil they have nothing else to do with it.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Uh, if i remember correctly all you do is relog to skip the cutscene. Technically, that is not an "Exploit". Personally they should make two separate roulette for the 50 MSQ where it divides players who want to watch cutscenes as opposed to those who don't want to.

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That's very much an exploit. That's a player knowingly engaging in an activity that will intentionally bypass an intended mechanic.

What they need to do is add a Trust style system to Praetorium and Castrum, then remove the MSQ roulette altogether. New characters can use the Trust or form a pre-made group with friends to run them. Other players have plenty of options to chose from to get XP/tomestones.

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Originally Posted by Awha

I mean it makes sense if the person has the desire to crash the market, especially when it generally annoys others. I could only imagine it is oddly satisfying to know that ones actions lead to a crash in a certain market, especially when one may have so much gil they have nothing else to do with it.

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If other players didn't panic at the first undercut, markets wouldn't crash unless supply dramatically increased from other than normal sources (looking at you, Quick Ventures) or demand died out.

If you know price activity for an item is unusual, sit tight or pull out for a few days. As long as supply/demand hasn't changed overall, the market will rebound.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Uh, if i remember correctly all you do is relog to skip the cutscene. Technically, that is not an "Exploit". Personally they should make two separate roulette for the 50 MSQ where it divides players who want to watch cutscenes as opposed to those who don't want to.

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You can argue the meaning of "exploit" but it's against the rules regardless. (And yes, it is exploiting the game's inability to resume the unskippable cutscene once the player logs back in.)

A split roulette would defeat the purpose of the roulette, which is to keep the queue moving for the sake of first-time players trying to get through the story. And if they did split it, the "no cutscenes" roulette wouldn't have the high rewards in the first place, because they are intended as compensation for your time. No cutscenes = nothing to compensate.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

That's very much an exploit. That's a player knowingly engaging in an activity that will intentionally bypass an intended mechanic.

What they need to do is add a Trust style system to Praetorium and Castrum, then remove the MSQ roulette altogether. New characters can use the Trust or form a pre-made group with friends to run them. Other players have plenty of options to chose from to get XP/tomestones.

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Yes I don't understand players. Friend got suspended from 11 for going afk on summoner and letting his pet kill anything that agroed. They said that was not how the game was suppose to work and don't do it. He did it anyways and suffered.


Why didn't they make trusts go to 8 man and then you would be bale to do all 8 man content as well. Also why do the trusts have to be some special NPCs, can't they just be some generic fill out the roster place holders till more special NPCs get added. If that is the reason why we didn't get 8 man trusts. Did anyone ever ask why trusts were limited to 4 man parties?