Dealing with big undercutting

[Lastelli]

I decided to deal with undercutters by ignoring them. I put my stuff up for sale and update my prices like once a week. But that's just because I have no need for more gil right now. Someone will buy eventually.

[ruskie]

I decided to deal with undercutters by ignoring them. I put my stuff up for sale and update my prices like once a week. But that's just because I have no need for more gil right now. Someone will buy eventually.

About the same for me. Though usually not even check the prices. Though yeah I do get annoyed by undercutters so have been known to just dump the prices to rock bottom on stuff. It's amazing how many try and undercut something that on average is being sold at 200k and then undercut to 150k and you dump it to 50k... and then people undercut to 40k and lower... Can be a fun game hehe

[Archaell]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am pretty new to the end game 3star crafting, so due to my lack of experience I am trying to learn how to be the most effective on the markets. It seems like the better I get at crafting the things the harder time I have to sell them - the market board is sometime seriously baffling game.

Before the previous week I was used to putting the goods on MB and ignoring them till they got sold, but when I started crafting the i220 gear almost nothing was selling for some odd reason. So I decided to keep an eye on the stuff and realised that people were updating their prices at least once an hour. That was a great shock, and seriously annoying thing to do, but when I tried it I went from selling nothing to making over 10M a day. Insane difference.

Everything was working well, till someone decided to lower the prices by half. I was having a really hard time grasping that. Why would they want to double their effort for same amount of gil? Not to mention that lower price did not affected number of sold items that much. They might have discouraged few crafters from crafting more items, but their own profits decreased so much that it would have been better for everyone to just leave the price higher and sell less things... but it was somehow okay.

During the end of the week it got out of hand. Few more players who like to lower the price by at least 20% and more emerged and then they got into a competition with themselves, so the markets are kinda... damaged beyond repair right now... good job folks. ^^

Anyways, because most of the last week was so great, I now have enough gil to take deserved vacation from crafting. It is really great I don't have to craft myself to death with the current state of MB... and to be honest crafting 95% of my playtime was seriously exhausting. Gil was great, but it felt like a second job... tho I am happy I can now buy a house when they add more wards ^^

So again thank you for your tips.

[Miles_Maelstrom]

I'm the kind of person you hate. I mostly get items I sell from my retainers. So to me any money I get is profit. My rules of placing up items for sale:

1. I like "nice" numbers. If the item you place for sale is currently at 10,999 best believe I post at 10,000 a much nicer number. Also the higher the value the more I round. Like sub 5k I will go to numbers ending in 250, 500, 750, above I start rounding only to 1k. And even higher will start rounding 5k. It just gets worse the more expensive the item.

2. If I see a price that makes me go I'll never buy it at that price, I will slash it for no reason.

3. I try to post low quantities, lots of people many to craft a single item so buying 50+ stacks is a bother. Low quanta stacks while taking up more sell slots, tend to sell better, even when they are undercut.

[DarkDedede]

Whenever I "undercut," it usually falls under the following situations.

1) The price I use is actually the going rate, according to the price history of that item. If every item that has sold goes has been selling for around 15k, I have no sympathy for the one seller, left with listings, that thinks they can list for 45k+.

2) If the price of an item is so obscene that there may be a sale once a month, compounded with the fact that the price of the materials are selling for no where near a price to justify that asking price, I will sell for a price that I think justifies my cost and effort. Nothing too low, of course, but low enough to get buyers to jump at the opportunity to get the item at a lower price. The few times I've actually done this (after and all the other sellers drop their prices to undercut me back, of course), all the listing start selling regularly (including mine), and within a much shorter time than at the original obscene price.

It usually boils down to the fact that if the item is not selling at regular intervals, odds are the price is just too high to justify a purchase. I'd much rather a potential buyer purchase something from the market board (me), rather than commission a crafter to have the item made elsewhere.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I'll say one thing... if I post something... and you undercut me by 1gil? Yea I'm going to post many of the same item and undercut by a significant amount purely out of spite. I absolutely hate when people do that -1 gil nonsense and if they keep doing it to the same auction I take huge chunks off until they get really low and then I pull my auctions until theirs sells for the lowball. Once I see their auction gone after I've floored their profit I relist. Cause that -1 gil crap is obnoxious and those who do it must be purged! ^_^

[Knahli]

I'll say one thing... if I post something... and you undercut me by 1gil? Yea I'm going to post many of the same item and undercut by a significant amount purely out of spite. I absolutely hate when people do that -1 gil nonsense and if they keep doing it to the same auction I take huge chunks off until they get really low and then I pull my auctions until theirs sells for the lowball. Once I see their auction gone after I've floored their profit I relist. Cause that -1 gil crap is obnoxious and those who do it must be purged! ^_^

I'm the opposite. Unless items are in their hundreds of thousands or millions then I appreciate when people undercut by the same value or just one gil - I could argue that people who don't are the obnoxious ones. If you're selling a single item and are the last one to the markets, then you are going to aim to undercut no matter what. No-one should feel guilty about that because that's the nature of the game; selling your items for as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Regardless of it being a competitive environment, it's silly to act like you aren't sharing the market. So if you are selling an item on a regular basis then you should acknowledge that other people are too. Even if you are competing with them, at the end of the day you are both aiming for the same thing and undercutting by crass amount of money sabotages everyone else out there trying to make a profit. People who undercut by 1 gil aren't being stingy with their money, they're trying to protect the value of an item for all people involved.

The difference between 39,999 and 39,000 is an OCD thing to feel petty about, anything more is even worse once others follow suit. There are enough people out there cutting item value by ridiculously, unnecessary amounts of money in a single swoop and I well appreciate everyone who undercuts by 1-100 gil in an effort to preserve the value as much as possible from the next big undercutter when it's clear that an item sells just as well for the current price.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Sorry I get what you're saying... really I do... but I still see that -1gil thing as obnoxious and I feel compelled to retaliate whenever it's done to me. -100? sure. -10 for low priced stuff? no problem... but -1 ugh I cant help it. It drives me up a wall.

[Knahli]

Sorry I get what you're saying... really I do... but I still see that -1gil thing as obnoxious and I feel compelled to retaliate whenever it's done to me. -100? sure. -10 for low priced stuff? no problem... but -1 ugh I cant help it. It drives me up a wall.

Hahahaha, well I can't argue against that. We all have our pet peeves and I'd be lying if I said that I couldn't exactly see where you were coming from. In some sense it can be perceived as "disrespectful" almost. I know I used to see it that way before I got into crafting myself and realised that I appreciated when people undercut me by as much.

[Hanmerreborn]

I'll say one thing... if I post something... and you undercut me by 1gil? Yea I'm going to post many of the same item and undercut by a significant amount purely out of spite. I absolutely hate when people do that -1 gil nonsense and if they keep doing it to the same auction I take huge chunks off until they get really low and then I pull my auctions until theirs sells for the lowball. Once I see their auction gone after I've floored their profit I relist. Cause that -1 gil crap is obnoxious and those who do it must be purged! ^_^

I'm the same. Cut me by 1, I'm cutting you by thousands if not more depending on how much the item is going for.