Market feels broken. I'm curious why -- and does this diminish crafting?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...38/unknown.png

Why do I keep seeing things priced so low they don't even make sense anymore? They don't make sense from the time OR materials standpoint. Sometimes they don't even make sense if you ONLY totted up the cost of crystals consumed to craft them.

As a crafter this feels like a pretty bad thing--thought I'm also,as a crafter,the one supplying the demimateria in this example. But does the economy feel like it's finally right-sizing for most other players, and this is just me hating change/misreading things?


Is it because we now have an oversupply of crafters?
Do we have a huge increase in players sending retainers on retainer ventures?
Are retainer ventures badly unbalanced? Are quick ventures too quick?
Are players purposefully undercutting/crashing the market?
Are we having an increase in market botting?

And in the end, is it undermining crafting as a cooperative/social thing?
I.e. if everyone is a crafter, but there's no reason to sell crafted things or make things for friends, is there any reason to be a crafter besides making for yourself?

Too much stuff is given for free... retainer balance is a mess, so yeah... no one gonna buy that 500 Fountains, sadly...

Is it because we now have an oversupply of crafters? - Yes

Do we have a huge increase in players sending retainers on retainer ventures? - Probably

Are retainer ventures badly unbalanced? Are quick ventures too quick? - loot pools have changed, as as the game goes on, more adjustments have been made.


Are players purposefully undercutting/crashing the market? - I'd say yes.

Are we having an increase in market botting? - it's entirely possible yes.


And in the end, is it undermining crafting as a cooperative/social thing? - ever since the changes were made to crafting to make it easier for everyone, now since everyone can basically do it...

I.e. if everyone is a crafter, but there's no reason to sell crafted things or make things for friends, is there any reason to be a crafter besides making for yourself? - unless you have some kind of niche item like the treasure map stuff, since everyone can make stuff easily, the mb is basically there for lazy people to make money off of. but don't count on making a fortune by playing it.

You're assuming it cost the other 18 sellers 1 Expanse Baleen, 5 Aurum Regis Nuggets, 5 Adamantite Nuggets, 15 Cut Stone, 5 Abalanthian Spring Water, 5 Fieldcraft Demimateria III, 2 Wind Clusters and 1 Fire Cluster to make those fountains.

It didn't. It cost them 2 ventures. None of those other fountains for sale have a Maker's Signature on them.

It can save frustration if you check the MB before deciding what to craft for profit. See what the current listing prices are then check the sales history to see what the item has actually sold for and how quickly.

Outdoor furnishings are generally a bad choice because it's a very limited number of players looking to buy a very limited number of items. The best time to sell outdoor furnishings is the first two weeks after new wards have been added. There are hundreds of new house owners who need to decorate from scratch. There's still a chance to make a profit outside of that window but it takes checking the MB carefully and some patience waiting for a buyer to come along.

There are indeed people that purposely crash a market so they can snap up all the people that rush to undercut or if the bots undercut they can snap them up and then sell on another World Server to make a profit. It's weird. But right now there's quite a few selling these stacks worth millions on a few of the pricier map mats, the markets dropped rather drastically and the way it's worked out it looks like it's the same person or a group of related people.

https://imgur.com/a/0TnrnXZ

As long as retainers bring back stuff that is craftable, yes, the market is going to be crap. I have 54 of them, and even after the change I saw before patch 5.5 (the drop rate on craftable seemed to drop by 50% for a while), the prices didn't change much. I have tried buying up some very low priced items and desynth them, but it seems like the retainer drops are linked to the number (or price) of the items on the MB, so that didn't really work for long.

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Originally Posted by Luminari

There are indeed people that purposely crash a market so they can snap up all the people that rush to undercut or if the bots undercut they can snap them up and then sell on another World Server to make a profit. It's weird. But right now there's quite a few selling these stacks worth millions on a few of the pricier map mats, the markets dropped rather drastically and the way it's worked out it looks like it's the same person or a group of related people.

https://imgur.com/a/0TnrnXZ

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I seen that alot of my server with the Calf Skins.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

I seen that alot of my server with the Calf Skins.

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Calf Leather dropped in price because it's become more available since the patch added a new rare crafting mat to the treasure map dungeons. not because of undercutters

This is normal and has always happened - this isn't breaking the MB. Loot tables have changed and diff items have become less rare and new items have become rare.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Calf Leather dropped in price because it's become more available since the patch added a new rare crafting mat to the treasure map dungeons. not because of undercutters

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Not when you see 20+ listings of 99 stacks though.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Not when you see 20+ listings of 99 stacks though.

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DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

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We've always seen a big price drop with the release of a new major patch and a new map crafting material. That's nothing new. The old material will start dropping outside of the dungeon, increasing supply at the same time demand for the material falls off.

What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

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Originally Posted by Chaletamale

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

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Not quite true, on a couple of occasions I have noticed Sell Orders where the price was so low, it was a lot less than selling the item direct to the nearest Vendor.

On the last one I saw I made 370 Gil profit buying them up and selling them to the Vendor :D

As for Retainer returns spoiling Crafting, across my Characters I have 7 Retainers who Quick Venture for me.

In the last week alone I have had 5 'Stuffed Alphas', 4 'Cannonballs' & 3 'Nameday Cakes' :confused:

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Originally Posted by Chaletamale

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

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If the listings are remaining on the MB long enough for an undercut war to drop the price close to 0, it's not the undercutting that's the problem. It's the supply on the MB compared to the demand. Items that have demand equal to or greater than the supply don't last long enough on the MB for undercutting to become a problem.

When the supply is that much higher than the demand, it's usually not worth listing the item unless you don't have anything else to list.

Increasing the sell to vendor value would be a mistake because that's one of the way RMT fuels itself - vendor off things that won't sell on the MB. SE has already chopped vendor value on a lot of items to combat that.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

... What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

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Same is fairly recently happening on the EU servers. Stacks of 50/99 calf leather and even stacks of 50+ frontier cloth. Always the same retainers and always at a "low" price. Funny thing is that they always get posted around the same time every day. For example, around 6AM and 7PM listings of large stacks of calf leather and frontier cloth are posted for cheap. People are even "camping" the MB for those listings so they can buy it out.

Oh and the same goes for maps. They always get bought by a lvl 19 mule characted around the same time every day. Talking 50+ maps here btw. It's sad really.

The script for map botting seems to have gone public sometime in the past few months, which probably explains why it's blown up so badly all of a sudden across the game as a whole.

There initially was only a single group on my server with sporadic periods of activity, but it wasn't long after they became consistent and constantly farming maps that I started seeing them springing up all over the DC.

I've seen five different groups just on my server alone and it's honestly kind of pathetic that SE seems just as inept at dealing with them as any other bot when their activity is even MORE obvious then the sorts we've been dealing with previously. Seeing an entire group of players moving and acting in near perfect unison is a painfully obvious indicator of scripted activity.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Too much stuff is given for free... retainer balance is a mess, so yeah... no one gonna buy that 500 Fountains, sadly...

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This is a big factor of it. Things like bozjan lockbox
or horde sacks from deep dungeons for example have absolutely killed the value of alot of things to the point where more expensive to make than buy.

You can often see how bad the problem is just looking at things like deep dungeons. And the way everyone totally ignores the horde sacks and just goes straight to the next floor because the contents of those sacks are ultimately worthless once the content is more than 10 minutes old. Because the markets become flooded that quickly.

I remember back in potent got 2 edda minions used one sold the other for 10 million. Honestly didn't expect anyone to buy it but they did. Got another one the next day and it was already worth less than 5k.

Yes it hurts... why ffs why get crafted primal weapons trashed so fast... like Sephirot is like what? 200 gil? lol Its ok the fight is easy to farm but holy do you really gotta give finished weapons for free? I recall what fun it was to sell ramuh, ravana etc back then... *sight*

It wasnt even just bc of the gil... the feeling, to know ive made smt special for someone which he cherishes... like that ppl that saved ages for high allagan or dragongod gear....

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Yes it hurts... why ffs why get crafted primal weapons trashed so fast... like Sephirot is like what? 200 gil? lol Its ok the fight is easy to farm but holy do you really gotta give finished weapons for free? I recall what fun it was to sell ramuh, ravana etc back then... *sight*

It wasnt even just bc of the gil... the feeling, to know ive made smt special for someone which he cherishes... like that ppl that saved ages for high allagan or dragongod gear....

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Because inventory and glamour dresser space are limited. Only those who plan to use the weapon for glamour are going to buy while the materials to craft are so readily available eager sellers flood the market trying to profit off the hot new thing.

If the glamour system worked more like WoW's transmog, prices would stay high because collecting a glamour wouldn't take up space. There would be a lot more buyers fighting over the supply.

think this is one thing bdo does better nothing ever really losses value granted thats both good and bad :P

There's usually a nice spike in prices when an expansion releases, then it drops back to nothing is worth anything for the rest of the 2 year period. I know I'm exaggerating a bit.

Crafted stuff could be worth something if it was requiring very rare materials or massive quantities (99 ingots), but that would also make it very painful if you botch for any reason including your internet dropping. So I'd like a failsafe system that always returns a portion of the mats when a big synth fails.

And for long term demand there must be things that people need more than once, besides food.
How about a system where having a large quantity of any item lets you forge them into some kind of super crystal, available in several different grades depending on the item used. And you need those super crystals as a catalyst for a new tier of crafting, or every grade of crystal for augmenting your gear.

That would delete the oversupply of all old items on the market, since any listed too cheaply would be bought up to be morphed. Such a sweeping change could reinvigorate every dead item on the market, giving people a lot of room to find a niche to supply.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

How about a system where having a large quantity of any item lets you forge them into some kind of super crystal, available in several different grades depending on the item used. And you need those super crystals as a catalyst for a new tier of crafting, or every grade of crystal for augmenting your gear.

That would delete the oversupply of all old items on the market, since any listed too cheaply would be bought up to be morphed. Such a sweeping change could reinvigorate every dead item on the market, giving people a lot of room to find a niche to supply.

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You just described Demimateria, which usually only comes from desynthesis. Many ARR and HW recipes require it. I'm not certain why SE started excluded it from SB/ShB recipes, switching to scrip materials instead.

Desynthesis had been eliminating a lot of the oversupply on the MB until the crafting and desynthesis changes this expansion removed most of the profit potential. Demand for materials gained through desynthesis has plummeted, making it much riskier as a way to make gil since you're primarily relying on demimateria RNG. Not much point in buying up a stack of items at 1000 gil each when your chance of getting a demateria that will sell for 7500 gill is only about 10% and the remaining materials are only selling for 100-200 gil each because almost no one is using them to level anymore.

My favorite is the girl/bot on Phoenix who has about a million retainers and undercuts herself by minimum 20k at a time with 4 full retainers of one item. xD I understand undercutting is a natural part of an economy, but when it's obvious something fishy is going on, it'd be nice if there were any kind of repercussions for these people from SE. When you've started naming retainers 'phoenixone' 'phoenixtwo' 'phoenixthree' -- up to 20 or so, or given up naming them altogether (one literally was named something like 'aslfjasjf') you're obviously not a legitimate player at that point. And you can't confront them about it in game or you'll get reported for 'harrassment' tell me how that's fair. xD

That's not just on Phoenix sadly. The reason they name their retainers "phoenixone' 'phoenixtwo' 'phoenixthree" is because that's their Phoenix retainers. They then have their Zodiark, Lich, Odin, Shiva, Twintania retainers too all supplied by one crafting bot. When cross DC becomes a thing, unless there are trade restrictions, botting rings will have access to pretty much every market.

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Originally Posted by Luminari

There are indeed people that purposely crash a market so they can snap up all the people that rush to undercut or if the bots undercut they can snap them up and then sell on another World Server to make a profit. It's weird. But right now there's quite a few selling these stacks worth millions on a few of the pricier map mats, the markets dropped rather drastically and the way it's worked out it looks like it's the same person or a group of related people.

https://imgur.com/a/0TnrnXZ

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I admit. Sometimes I crash a market just because I think it would be funny or out of spite for a competitor. It's a free market and there's no restriction on people engaging in unmarket-like behaviors. I've always seen the MB as a game in of itself. You win or lose. If you want gil, you dance around until you find a open market, then leave when you find it not worth the investment. Or you find it fun to compete with others to sell their product, you can do that too. I don't like bots, because they don't try to challenge you after a certain threshold, but it is fun trying to figure out those thresholds.

Crafting exists to allow you to craft your own products to use. The MB is a tool to sell surplus. There are other ways to make gil. And SE seems intent on trying to find ways to decrease the gil supply, which is pretty up there from what I've seen.