Lets Talk About UNDERCUTTERS!!!!

[Tanthalas]

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I hear you and I was like you a year or so ago. I was making the brand new off hand tools that took the ehcatl sealant. expensive to make and about 2 million profit on the rare occasion one sold. I got sick and tired of being undercut and I dropped 500k of my sale. all of a suddedn I couldn't keep up with the demand. I couldn't buy sealant cheap enough half the time. but when I did these sold 2 3 or even 4 times daily up from once or twice a week. eventually I dropped my prices lower and lower making only 300 to 400k profit. others dropped their prices too and whilst I still got undercut and missed sales things were selling well enough that I didn't mind. I look at the ah today and see something selling slowly. you got to ask yourself is it too expensive or do ppl not want it. its a 50/50 guess but half the time its just that is too expensive

[nyttyn]

If someone is selling for a very low price, they usually don't have too much of the item and just want to get rid of it = they don't influence the market in the long run. AND if they are actually selling for lower than the cost of materials, just buy them out and sell for actual amounts, you will save gil and time, they will sell what they want to sell, everyone is happy.

doesn't work for servers like sargantanas where you have a huge population. there's simply too many people who are willing to tank the price - they simply overwhelm via numbers, gradually eroding the price in spite of anything you may attempt to combat it.


note this isn't for things like thavanian bustiers going down to sane prices people are willing to buy, but basically every non-ephemeral stone, every item that can be gathered or crafted without super time gated mats getting crashed to absymal prices. even clusters can get driven down to incredibly low prices if it's a particularly bad day.

[Eisen-Zorn]

Isn't a regulated free market contradicting? How can you have a regulated free market? Wouldn't that make it a controlled market?

Yes.

They're not arguing for a "regulated" market. They're basically advocating price fixing and something more akin to a "Centrally Planned" market structure that would discourage or prohibit significant influence by the buyers and sellers.

[sirDarts]

doesn't work for servers like sargantanas where you have a huge population. there's simply too many people who are willing to tank the price - they simply overwhelm via numbers, gradually eroding the price in spite of anything you may attempt to combat it.


note this isn't for things like thavanian bustiers going down to sane prices people are willing to buy, but basically every non-ephemeral stone, every item that can be gathered or crafted without super time gated mats getting crashed to absymal prices. even clusters can get driven down to incredibly low prices if it's a particularly bad day.

If the price is tanked so low that it's not worth selling, don't bother. Easy as that. Craft or gather something that IS worth selling.
If the supply is that high, the demand has little to no way to be up there as well, so adding more to it is just not worth it.

[Thandronen]

If the supply really is limited and you get undercut by that much, you could always buy out the undercutter's items then resell them for your own price.

/endthread

[Billeffingmurray]

Isn't a regulated free market contradicting? How can you have a regulated free market? Wouldn't that make it a controlled market?

There is no actual life-threatening result to be had from an unregulated in-game market. Thus there is ZERO reason for regulation, just let the natural flow of supply and demand do its job.

Regulation already exists in the market in the forms of subsidies (the paltry sums of gill you get for completing quests and the like), npc merchants (should be driving prices down for certain items also available on the market), and also undercutters (bringing down the price of over inflated goods). Un-regulated free markets never turn out well. Ex: history (Latin America in the 70's, Russia in the 90's, America in 2007). Lucky for us this market isnt as complicated as RL. I'm not necessarily saying SE needs to do anything, but if your mad that the market is dropping underneath you it might be time to adjust your prices to meet the market. Regulate yourself. %1500 profit is unsustainable

[sirDarts]

Regulation already exists in the market in the forms of subsidies (the paltry sums of gill you get for completing quests and the like), npc merchants (should be driving prices down for certain items also available on the market), and also undercutters (bringing down the price of over inflated goods). Un-regulated free markets never turn out well. Ex: history (Latin America in the 70's, Russia in the 90's, America in 2007). Lucky for us this market isnt as complicated as RL. I'm not necessarily saying SE needs to do anything, but if your mad that the market is dropping underneath you it might be time to adjust your prices to meet the market. Regulate yourself. %1500 profit is unsustainable

As you said, it regulates itself.
There is no need for any outside regulation. If it grows too high, nobody will buy it, and they will have to go down. If it's too cheap people will stop getting profit and they will give up on the low side.

There will always be extremes on both sides, but I see little reason to deny that possibility by any form of regulation.

[RyuDragnier]

1 thing to fix this massive undercutting nonsense.

Make it so you can never sell it on the marketboard for less than what you'd vender it for. This stops certain high level things (such as Clear Demimateria III) for being sold for less than their actual worth...like how Guild Wars 2 does it. There, we've fixed a lot of the nonsense for things, such as Clear Demimateria III being sold for less than 5K gold (it can be vender'd for that much people).

[Ashkendor]

1 thing to fix this massive undercutting nonsense.

Make it so you can never sell it on the marketboard for less than what you'd vender it for. This stops certain high level things (such as Clear Demimateria III) for being sold for less than their actual worth...like how Guild Wars 2 does it. There, we've fixed a lot of the nonsense for things, such as Clear Demimateria III being sold for less than 5K gold (it can be vender'd for that much people).

When I see things like that listed on the board for less than their vendor price I don't let it bother me; I simply buy them up and vendor them. It's a small profit to be sure, but it's a profit nonetheless. I won't say no to free gil. ^^

@OP - the alternative to undercutting is price gouging/price fixing. It's fine how it is.

[Naunet]

It suddenly got really bad on Mateus in the low level materia market... people undercutting and posting dozens of materia for less than vendor price when they had individually been selling for 450-1000 gil per previously. It really is one of the dumbest parts of MMO economies. @_@