Please Squeenix, implement blind bids on the markets...

[Glyini]

The rate of undercutting is silly you only need 1 gil less to be at the top of the list and sell first. There is no reason to do a 50% undercut unless you love giving me extra profit as I buy it and relist it at my price and still have it instantly sell. There is no reason to cause a market to crash by listing stuff at such a huge undercut and start a bidding war.

What they need to do is make the lowest market price be the default price instead of using the vendor price when listing an item. That way they can see hmm this item is 8k maybe i should put it up for more than 2k. That or have the market histrory visible by default instead of having to click a small icon to check it out.

[Steeled]

I support the OP.

My name is Conchobar and I am an undercutter.

I'm pretty good at playing auction houses, but this whole everybody sees the price thing forces you to undercut, because you want yours to be the first to sell. If you price it for the second or third to sell, you risk others undercutting and you being knocked further down the list.

It's silly.

[zenmetsu]

The rate of undercutting is silly you only need 1 gil less to be at the top of the list and sell first. There is no reason to do a 50% undercut unless you love giving me extra profit as I buy it and relist it at my price and still have it instantly sell. There is no reason to cause a market to crash by listing stuff at such a huge undercut and start a bidding war.

You seriously do not understand how markets work. Everything is supply and demand. If I mine up 20 stacks of something, and I want them GONE, I'm not going to list them for the same price as everyone else. Undercutting by 1gil is douchebaggery at its finest, but all is fair in love and war. If the going price is 500gil per unit, and I am willing to let them go for 300gil, then I'll sell them for a price between 300gil and 500gil.

So along you come, and you somehow have it stuck in your head that "500gil" is the right price. You see my 300gil listings and you gobble them all up. Yay! You just lined my pockets. You re-list my items for 500gil and meanwhile, I dump another 5 stacks on the market for 300gil. Your stacks at 500gil will never sell as a result.

Sometimes people wish to take control of a market by obtaining obscene amounts of an item and flooding the market at a price that is so low that people no longer bother to gather that item. Once that happens, the person controlling that item's market can slowly creep up the price and sell their inventory until someone catches on and starts to compete... then the price crashes again to drive out competition.

It's called capitalism. Deal with it.

With enough gil and persistence, you don't even need to gather/farm. I listed my Grade 5 Carbonized matter leftover from v1.0 for 1000 gil per unit. The market price was 15k. The market crashed. People were still offloading their stacks from v1.0. Once the price was low enough, I started buying up everything. I ended up with 20 full stacks and have been slowly selling them off for 20k per piece. You do the math. There is a time and place for undercutting.

[Alberel]

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

The supply and demand concept requires market stability to function properly, and when you have random people pricing goods using arbitrary numbers that have no relation to their actual value you have zero stability.

[Zfz]

Wait, so that means when I want to buy something, I can't see how much I'm going to pay for it?

Obviously not that. So that means I need to put out a blind offer and hope someone has it for sale at a price lower than that.

But that's just a huge inconvenience to buyers. When I want to buy a melded pre-relic, I have no idea what the going price is, and I'm afraid of paying too much for it, so I start with 1000gil. No go. 2000gil. No go. 5000gil. No. 6000gil. No. 7000, 7500, 7800, 8000, 8100, 8200,... you get the idea.

I'm pretty good at playing auction houses, but this whole everybody sees the price ...It's silly.

What auction house doesn't show a price? I'm genuinely curious.

[Hawklaser]

Supply and Demand, if you can drop something by say 20k and sell a bunch of them and still make a profit it makes sense to drop the price of an item.

The problem when you do that there is usually another 4-5 people that will undercut you even more. So something that might have went for 100k before, you dropped to 80k, and those other undercutters fighting to sell theirs first will drive it down to 10k before long. You just have to hope there is enough demand for an item to counteract that.

Something else one needs to keep in mind is some items have huge demand spikes. So just because an item is not needed on Tuesday, should not necessarily start undercutting the price drastically because it has not sold on Thursday when on Friday the demand spikes drastically. Most places don't mess with their prices because of a slow day or two.

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

The supply and demand concept requires market stability to function properly, and when you have random people pricing goods using arbitrary numbers that have no relation to their actual value you have zero stability.

You actually can check the current listing prices for the items from your retainer as you are setting the price.

[Syamic]

Has any of you taken into account the number of bots in this game?

All they are in it for is the fastest way to get Gil to resell on there RMT sites if this means undercutting they will do it because all they want is Gil.
They can then just go farm for another 24 hours and do it all over again.

[zenmetsu]

IMO the real problem here isn't the market board itself but the fact that when listing items on your retainer you have no immediate means of checking other current listings. A lot of the massive 50% undercutting is coming from lazy players who don't bother to actually check the prices before listing and so use a random figure in their head... this is also why you frequently see listings of crafted goods at less than their material cost, because some people don't bother to check.

Wrong on both counts. When I undercut by 50%, I know exactly what I am doing. I'm selling my shit for a price that I consider to be worthwhile.

How is a blind bid auction house system going to fix this? How is it going to determine which item sells. Let us assume that 2 HQ Whatchamacallits are on the market, one at 50K and one at 75K. The history shows 80K as the average price. A player bids 79K and wins an item. Which one sold? Do you prioritize based on lowest price? If so, my 50K item just sold and your 75K listing collects dust. If someone decides to start bidding at 40K and increasing at 500gil per bid, they'll STILL end up buying my 50K item before your 75K listing.

The "right price" is the price at which the item will sell while still meeting the demands of the seller. Period. When was the last time you walked into a store to buy something and got pissed off because the price was too low? Exactly...

[Rhapsodical]

Well one for the idea to hide stuff is never the idea. But there should be a fee to start for putting something up on the AH. Add a timer to how long an item will stay up for sale. If they choose to cancel their AH item for sale then charge a hefty fee to cancel it. If they want 1k for an item charge 25% fee of what they were asking. If they don't want to cancel it they can simply waiting the 3 or 5 days for the auction to end.

[Darken]

In what system could they make it so you couldn't check prices before selling your wares. People have to be able to check prices before purchasing an item. Even if you couldn't check the price while posting sales, the retainers are mere steps away from the market boards. People will still undercut. Adding a step or two between won't do much imo.

This real issue right now is server population, and the markets getting flooded with product. Crafting is still the only real way to obtain gil.