Lets Talk About UNDERCUTTERS!!!!

[joshdavis271]

My favorite type of undercutter who undercuts all the way below the vendor price, it makes the item not worth the effort to create or farm, you are better off vendoring the item.

[Dajinn]

I love how mad everyone in this thread is that they can't maximize profits for useless items cause other people are "undercutting" and actually selling them at reasonable rates.

[Coatl]

Try undercutting my 2 star crafts oh wait don't think anyone can afford to try that lmao gg.

What this guy says. If people are undercutting your stuff it probably has an inflated price tag over it and is actually not worth what you think it is. Not many people undercut anything worth caring about.

[LineageRazor]

The economy needs people who will drop prices down to what they're really worth and stop the greedy suppliers who try to lock prices up to ensure 10 minutes of work can make them hundreds of thousands of gil.

You were able to level and gear all of your crafting classes in ten minutes? Teach me your secrets!

Crafters as justified in charging a ridiculous price for ten minutes of work, because they did the months of hard work needed to get to the point where they can create a pricy item in ten minutes of work. That's something a lot of people (almost all of them folks who have never touched a crafting class) simply fail to see.

There's pretty much nothing in this game stopping ANYONE from making any item they desire. If you disagree with the cost of an item on the marketboards, make one yourself! If you try, and then decide that it's too boring or hard, well, now you know why crafters make so much money.

[Catwho]

I have a simple formula for pricing goods.

2 x (Cost of materials + cost of crystals) for NQ, and 4 x (cost of materials + cost of crystals) for HQ. This number is for the rough estimate; it can be adjusted up or down for level or for market prices after the fact. I do not sell anything on the boards for less than 1K, however. It's not worth the slot.

"Cost of materials" for little baby leveling items is negligible, which is why I never sell anything under level 15 for more than 4K gil, not even HQ items. "Cost of materials" for vanity gear is everything, so I'll probably cut down my commission price on things that use very expensive mats but don't take much effort to make.

[Keyln]

The problem is that Square-Enix shows really no understanding of how supply and demand works. In this expansion especially, Square Enix seems to focus mainly on the supply curve, keeping it shifted to the left along the demand curve by keeping the high end crafted items difficult, and the relative rarity of ingredients used in crafting.

The real problem is that the demand curve is depressed off to the left, as there are strong alternatives to the crafted gear in game (unless you are crafter or gatherer), and consumable items are only really used in about 5% of the game. Thus, the equilibrium point is at a point that does not exist, because the two curves don't meet. And thus, there will always be a market surplus of swords and crafting will never really be profitable, unless it's materia.

If Square-Enix is really serious about fixing the economy, they need to focus on the demand side of things. The equilibrium point where the supply and demand curves meet is not on the graph, and we have a market surplus where the market is unable to correct itself. The choice that Square-Enix has is that it can either shift the demand curve off to the right by lowering difficulty or decreasing rarity, or it can find a way to shift the demand curve to the right so that crafted items are more in demand.

[Craiger]

Why undercut at all? even by a small amount I mean...

I have seen countless scenarios where an item is selling really well, but since everyone is undercutting by some amount every time, it eventually drops to like 50% of what it cost before...

WHY? By selling for the same price as the lowest one, you're put at the top of the list anyways, and if players are buying, what's the point of reducing the amount you get? It's stupid...

I doubt players who are selling these kind of items are all "good people", who care about prices being too high, so it's not that.

Undercutting if something isn't selling is another thing though.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

There is two kinds of undercuting.

The justified one, where some crafters are just asking too much (and in this game that might be as much as 30 times the material cost of the item, like those 50k steel pieces...) and someone undercuts them to a steady sellable rate.
The Unjustified one, where items are being sold at a good rate, price is not a problem, but still someone goes and start an undercut race that sometimes even moves items below the profit range by making them cost less than the materials it takes to create.

Honestly, MB should have a window next to it, locked so people can`t move it or make it disapear with a few advices on how to "behave" on the market board.

[LineageRazor]

There is two kinds of undercuting.

The justified one, where some crafters are just asking too much (and in this game that might be as much as 30 times the material cost of the item, like those 50k steel pieces...) and someone undercuts them to a steady sellable rate.
The Unjustified one, where items are being sold at a good rate, price is not a problem, but still someone goes and start an undercut race that sometimes even moves items below the profit range by making them cost less than the materials it takes to create.

Honestly, MB should have a window next to it, locked so people can`t move it or make it disapear with a few advices on how to "behave" on the market board.

There's nothing unjustified about pricing cheap to move product that you have in surplus. If your retainers are busting at the seams with things to sell, you're going to sell cheap so you can make room more quickly. Once your surplus sells, prices will restablize. It may suck for other sellers in the meantime, but clearly their need to sell is not as great or they'd be pricing low as well.

It's like I've said before - there are NO market shenanigans that will have a lasting effect of any kind, unless those lasting effects were due to happen anyway. Getting upset about undercutting, to ANY degree, is ridiculous. Either the undercutters were right to price low, in which case you'd better join them asap, or they were wrong to price low, in which case prices will return to normal soon and you just need to ride out the storm. In either case, you have no idea WHY they're pricing low, and their reasons could be good (excess of stock) or bad (no money sense).

There's really only one piece of advice I'd put in your "behavior" window, and that's for morons to check the NPC price before putting stuff up for sale. I just feel sorry for them. All that crap for sale for the same price or less than an NPC would pay... and that's to say nothing of the taxes incurred!

[NekoGenesis]

I don't get why people complain. This is a free market. If you're being undercut for no good reason, and it's so cheap that it becomes vendor trash levels of value, buy it out, re-sell and make a tidy profit. If you don't, then you either don't have the gold to flip merch (extremely unlikely), or what you're trying to sell is in essence overpriced vendor trash.

If the price bounces back, it was just an anomaly by the undercutter, who probably needed to make a quick gil, or like someone said above, needed to do some spring cleaning and get more retainer inventory space.

If it doesn't bounce back, its market correction.