Please Undercut Wisely

[ApolloGenX]

I love it when people undercut the current trend by 50% in desperation to "sell now".

I grant their wish, then relist their product back to the current trend and enjoy the (basically) free Gil.

Funny thing is, this happened to a friend of mine. He listed at 800. Undercutters went 799, 798 etc. So he listed more at 500, 499 etc. They answered by pulling their 799s and relisting at 450, 449. He bought up/pulled everything under 800 and reposted all at 800 and sold.

There ensued a slew of cursing on /shout from the "aggrieved" undercutter. It was glorious.

Well, that can happen when you don't really have much supply. I usually do it with 10 + of items and 10 + stacks of stackables. If someone wants to buy all mine out, that is fine... I'll just put more stacks out there until they stop buying.

[Exphryl]

Due to the limit on items you can have up. I undercut a LOT. Doing so will cause me to sell more in a shorter time then selling them at near "market value" and playing a waiting game. Sure my individual gains will be lower per item, but I'll have 5x+ the sales so my overall net gains become very substantial. I'd be more conservative if there wasn't a limit, but I spend my free time crafting nonstop so I have lots to throw up.

[Astarica]

Well, that can happen when you don't really have much supply. I usually do it with 10 + of items and 10 + stacks of stackables. If someone wants to buy all mine out, that is fine... I'll just put more stacks out there until they stop buying.

I don't even understand how the often 'I lowered my price to trick people' thing can even work. It's obviously not possible on anything that's gatherable (the joke's on you for trying to control supply). If you've an item that moves in high quantities, like Fleece, and you had a sequence of say 300 (default) 250 (undercutter) 200 (you), what's most likely going to happen is a third party would've bought up all the 250s and certainly all the 200s since this item moves in high quantities and both you and the undercutter loses to a third party. So is there some secret trade wars over say, Ochu Vines? If the last price is actually near the market price, I've never had a trade war that goes beyond my first undercut, because somebody would've bought it after that first undercut, and if not, the next substantial retaliation undercut will certainly be bought by someone else which makes the ploy irrelevent.

I think what actually happens is that say you got a good that's priced at 1000gil and its market value is 500 gil so nobody is actually buying, so you undercut to 900, then another guy retaliate with 800, and you drop to 700 and then someone bought all your 700 gil stuff thinking they 'won', never mind that none of those items were ever going to sell in the first place. If the fair value of the said item is 1000 gil, the item would never have lasted long at 900 gil, let alone any price lower.

[OldGeezer]

That doesn't make you a low-life. But if you are selling the finished product for less than what you could get by selling the materials then you are being rather dim-witted. Not evil, but very ignorant.

Who says maximum profit is the only way to roll? I don't buy mats and I'm comfortable with an 80% margin, plus I like making things. I don't need a 99.9+% margin to feel good about a sale. Like others have said gil has very little value in this game. Aside from buying forthcoming housing, gil has limited importance in this game.

Edit 2: Your idea that people who don't gather their own materials are lazy is ignorant and insulting. If you work in a steel mill, are you considered lazy because you didn't go out and mine the iron ore (and coal and misc other minerals used in a particular alloy) yourself? If you work in a car assembling plant are you being lazy because you didn't mine the ore and smelt it yourself? Not to mention the glass, plastics, circuit boards, and everything else that goes into a car. If you run a retail outlet chances are you didn't do anything with the merchandise except buy in bulk to resell in smaller amounts at an increased price. You must think retailers are REALLY lazy.

Companies buy other companies in order to make materials internally and thereby lower their costs. This game allows this too. If FFXIV limited 1 character to 2-3 crafting professions like in other MMO's, crafted materials would be an essentail component to the economy. But they didn't, so crafting materials are optional to the economy. A person can do it all. It takes a little dedication but with the EXP rewards that come from HQ crafting leves it's remarkably fast and very profitable. Youi can grind 5 levels in 1 hour or so with the right recipe. If you're a dedicated crafter and you've only trained one profession so far I'm very curious about what you've been doing. I split my time between questing, grinding alts and crafting and all my main crafts are at level 35-and I'm taking it slow. So yeah, if you're not spending time developing other crafting classes, I wonder what you're doing with all that free time.

[Elphan]

You're welcome OP.

[ApolloGenX]

You're welcome OP.

Exactly, and for most things in this game- supply is infinite. People don't want to admit they are selling trash...especially when they are trying to sell it at high prices.

[Astarica]

Not only is supply effectively infinite, but the demand curve is constantly being moved to the left because there are very few worthwhile consumable items and finished product do not spontaneously break down, unlike real life. For example, if you just hit level 50 and someone offered you a Militia Hat for vendor cost (~100 gil), you'd take it. But after you have something from AK or DL hat, you most likely won't take it for vendor cost because it's taking up a valuable spot in your armory space, unless you're trying to SB stuff. You literally can't give away most low level gear just because the guys who need it can't even be bothered to look it up.

[Inquisitor]

snip

I never suggested gouging and an 80% margin is more than enough. My simple point is that if you sell finished goods for LESS than the market value of the materials then you're not being very bright. The idea that materials you gather yourself are "free" is only true if you don't consider your time to have any value. Many people simply don't understand that.

If you mean me in particular, I gatherer most of the materials I need with the exception of drops (since the highest combat class I have is level 29.) I rarely gather my own shards because my gathering time can be better spent farming other things. I would venture to say that once you get to higher crafting and gathering levels you'll realize that too.

But some people don't want to 'do it all' and it's unfair to call them lazy for wanting to spend their leisure time in a way that's different than how you want to use theirs. You call them lazy, I call them customers.

PS I'm also an Old Geezer. A grumpy one at that.

[Astarica]

People keep on say 'market value', but they don't get that your items are not worth the market value. Let's say the lowest fleece for sale is 300 gil. A guy decided to quit the game and hand you the 1000 fleece he's been hoarding. I guess some people will think you can immediately sell 299X1000 on the market for 299K. Well, all I can say is good luck if you actually believed in that. You might be able to sell close to 299K if you had a very long time to sell them, like say a month. If you wanted to sell this in a hurry, you got to make a rather drastic cut, and the fact that you're unloading 1000 Fleece is likely to cause some kind of mass panic when other people see 1000 fleece for sale at a low price (say, 250) which further destroys the value of your items.

If you really believe your mats are that valuable when computing the price of the finished good, you should be selling your mats instead. This also ignores the fact that in a MMORPG, the finished product generally loses value compared to the original materials, because once a shard has been turned into some finished product, it can no longer be turned into anything else. You have far better flexibility holding onto a thousand shards and some basic stuff like ores, than keeping a supply of ingots/rings/plates/rivets let alone the finished product.

[Terius]

Please keep undercutting. Such good bargains.

What? Your crafter can't sit in a pile of gil and do nothing all day?