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

[Rhapsodical]

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.

I feel Cactuar has way less people on it since the free sub trials have run out. Items aren't moving as fast as they once did. The market is finally stabilizing and profits won't be as easy to make. Our FC is full of like 4 to 5 level 50 crafters who got over like 2mil gil and simply don't even bother to craft unless someone asks them personally because gil is worthless atm. Once 2.1 launches and we get Dailies aka the money makers gil will lose even more value.

[zenmetsu]

Apparently getting 2 gil for your work unless you're lvl 50 is acceptable?

Who said anything about 2 gil? When grade 4 carbonized matter was selling for 500gil a piece, I dumped dozens of stacks onto the market for 100gil per piece (9,900 per stack). I listed for 20% of the market value. No one undercut me. 100gil for a couple seconds of work was fair in my eyes. I still made millions, and I probably made a lot of crafters happy.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

oooh coome ooon... stop being greedy.. so people undercut you.. but i bet you are still profiting.
i undercut myself.
to see HQ Dagger soup on my server for 2k is over kill when the costs of making it is close to 500g..
i fish my own fish and i got a friend that helps me with bot items allowing me to drop the price since my production cost is.. 0g
so i sell for 1k, make som greedy people cry
and make 100% profit.

[Ramzal]

So the problem is capitalism?

Seriously though, it's fine as it is. It's a competition towards funds by selling goods. It would be a mess if we couldn't see what others were selling the item for. I like to think of my retainer as--say---a economic spy who can get me the info I need on prices so I can come out on top. It's fine how it is.

[zenmetsu]

And is that 50% undercut the minimum price you would want for the item? Also why would you drop it by 50% when you could often achieve better results by trying 85% first? While you may see it as worthwhile, you also give yourself no wiggle room to account for people that further undercut you. Stores do the same thing, it is actually rather rare that they are not making a profit off of even their sale items, and when they do loose profit on an item on sale, they are trying to get you into their store to buy more than just that one item. When was the last time you found drastic price differences on an item for sale by businesses in the real world outside of sales?

The 50% undercut is not the minimum price that I would want. Hell, some of the stuff I would sell for 20% of the market rate. I sell for a price that I feel compensates me for the time/effort that I spent acquiring the item. Could I just sell for 85%? Sure! It would probably not sell as fast, and where do you draw the line on "legitimate"? 85%? 80%? 75%? See where I am going?

It's the same damned thing in the real world, with the libtards saying that the rich aren't taxed enough. How much should the rich be taxed? 50%? 80%? 99.9%? The problem is jealousy, and the answer is "tax them so much that they have less money than I do"... and the answer is incorrect.

Usually I sell for a price halfway between my desired minimum and the market price. If people undercut me, oh well, I can re-list.

As for profit, exactly how much do you think it costs me per item when I mine/harvest/fish something up? Think about it long and hard.

[CSX]

I'm a level 50 crafter who spends lots. . . ./charlimit

Annonymous bids would be good. The way it is now, you have to undercut from the get go or just not sell your item at all (unless you're the only one selling). I never really thought of it because I got used to these kinds of AH after I left FFXI but bringing this system back would be dang awesome and pretty nostalgic lol.

Undercutting will always be there SE can't do anything about it but people are lazy, and what I mean by that is, in FFXI (unless I was unfortunate enough to get a person who wants to save every bit of gil they could) I was able to undercut an item worth 100k to 50k and still sell it at 100k, 95k or 99k because people were to lazy to start low and keep bidding, bidding, bidding until they meet reserve.

I guess what I'm trying to say is really hard to explain and might come down as straight nonsense to most people but it's actually quite good. Lets say I just got done selling five 100k items for 50k and there are 25 of said items available on the AH, someone bought all of my five and. . .no, now wait a minute, it would kind of be worse, because if I sold those items for 50k, flooded the history @50k and a new seller uses the History for price reference they would normally price theirs for 50k or lower because they don't know if those other 20 people are also selling it at 50k or not. . .

hmmmph. . .I don't know, this really is a toughy. . .annonymous bidding might not work aswell as I thought it used to and thinking on it now. . .that scenario up top used to happen to me a lot.

[Hawklaser]

Time lost waiting for an item to sell at a higher price is TIME LOST.

Time is valuable, but you are not really loosing time when listing something closer to its current value unless of course you are trying to move a ridiculous amount of item in say 5 hours. Also by drastically dropping the price of an item you are devaluing not only the item, but also the time needed to make or obtain said item. So really if you are loosing time waiting on an item to sell, you must not be doing anything else in that period either.

might have... seriously, this is why contractions should be banned.

anyhoo... if someone is willing to farm or craft an item day in and day out and sell it for 10K, then that is their decision. As long as someone is willing to provide the market with that product for 10K, any asking price that is higher is going to be rejected by the consumers until the supplier is no longer able to meet the demand.

I'll go fix that just for you.

Yeah it is their decision to do so, but more often than not, a decision made in haste is a poor one. And the main reason most undercut is due to being impatient and wanting their gil an hour in the past. The problem with most massive undercutting is that it will often snowball because most people don't consider a larger period of time, as it can easily make what was just undercut on worthless for a prolonged period of time. Now if you are trying to drive out your competition for a market, that is a totally different ball of wax.

[SchalaZeal]

who cares. Crafting is worthless, Darklight gear obtainable from philosophy is better than all crafted gear, and coil gear is better, and mythology gear is better, why did people even waste time on crafts when you dont need it, the gear is better everywhere else, even the pink low lvl items from dungeons are slightly better than HQ gear of the same lvl. So have fun with your crafting garbage, ill be in coil rockin gear way better than that junk

Vanya/Darksteel/Gryphonskin/Astral/Rose Gold crafted gear can easily equal/best Darklight, and even equal or be superior to AF2/Allagan. But it's much more costly. Though not limited by an artificial 300/week.

[Edewen]

It is NOT AN AUCTION HOUSE. Price things appropriately. It is not SE's fault you can't manage your e-store.

[zenmetsu]

Yeah it is their decision to do so, but more often than not, a decision made in haste is a poor one. And the main reason most undercut is due to being impatient and wanting their gil an hour in the past. The problem with most massive undercutting is that it will often snowball because most people don't consider a larger period of time, as it can easily make what was just undercut on worthless for a prolonged period of time. Now if you are trying to drive out your competition for a market, that is a totally different ball of wax.

The only decisions made in haste are people that just blindly charge the same rate as everyone else. Oh wait, undercutting by 1gil is OK, I forgot. Oh wait, someone else came along and undercut by another 1gil... then another... and another... SHIT, now the market price is 5 gil less than what you originally listed it for, better go re-list it. 2 hours have passed, you go to check the market, the price is 10gil lower now because of people dropping the price by 1gil at a time. Hmm... see a trend? THE PRICE IS TOO DAMNED HIGH.

You aren't getting it. If people are trying to sell an item for 20k gil, and I can be happy with 10k, why would I sell it for 20k? We only have 20 slots on our retainers after all. So while you are trying to sell 5-6 items for 20k gil, i'm selling 20 of them 10k each. By time my stuff sells, i've made/gathered more and replenish my retainer with new stock. Fast forward 5 hours, I've emptied my retainer 3 times, sold 60*20k = 1,200k gil, and you've sold zero. I go off and do something else or log out, the price creeps back up in the absence of my supply and maybe, just maybe, you manage to sell a few before I log in and start at it again.

I *have* driven you, the competition, out of the market. You refuse to lower your price because selling for my price is "not worth it" in your eyes. In actuality, trying to sell for "your price" is what is "not worth it".

34,817,220... it represents an amount of something that I have, that you likely would love to have. If the corresponding number for your character is greater than this, then congratulations. If it is lower than this, then you probably should not be telling me about economics within this game. I went there... at great peril of looking like a douche, but sometimes people need a reality check.