Extreme Undercutting - Should it be a violation?

[kikix12]

Undercutting is a mechanism of competition as was mentioned before.

Thinking it should be a bannable offense though just because it's irritating to some is simply ridiculous. Look at the market from the consumers/buyers perspective. People that sell stuff for large sums are the irritating ones. So now we can't sell for low, nor can we sell for high...and whatever price you sell whatever at, it'll fit either of these.

In real life there are regulations that prohibit severe undercutting...yes. But they have a very important reason. Limited resources. You can't have any income by selling items for more than it cost you to make them, so the absolute lowest you can go en masse is to even out your costs to make em (or give for "free", which is effectively charity and not sale). If you sell for less than it did cost you to make, then it's either to get rid of something that failed to sell for a LONG time (which is acceptable) or try to destroy your small-time competition (which is NOT acceptable) with your overwhelming budget. As such, with real-life situations, it is very easy to prove who had malicious intent.
In game, the cost of making anything is zero (since you can get every single thing in this game without spending a single gil). You cannot possibly sell something for less than it did cost you (or rather, how it COULD cost you), since you can't sell for negative...as in you paying others to take it.

In other words, no. There is zero reason to complain about people undercutting, as there is zero reason for people driving the prices up. In the end, it is the supply and demand, supported by inflation, that will bring the general price to what the item is "worth", per see. In other words, the only thing Square Enix SHOULD do is control the inflation by money sinks and careful implementation of gil generation. Everything else WILL work itself out if this one thing will be properly done.

[AlexionSkylark]

I sold 2 Bismarck minions at 5 mil on my server

Then when I listed the 3rd, someone went there and put his for 2.8 MIL
Was I angry? you can bet your soul I was. I paid 2.6 on an expanse baleen and that guy KILLED my ENTIRE profit margin AT ONCE. And price for the minion NEVER came back up again. Then other people came undercutting THAT guy and I ended up selling it at 2.4 mil. I was expecting a 2 mil profit, instead got a 200k loss. Probably from some guy who got the baleen on a drop and didn't know you need to factor in the price of materials when selling stuff.

(actually, apparently NOBODY does that in this game, BTW. I see stuff like a bloodhempen cloth that take 12 plants to make being sold at 20~30% less than the value of 12 plants. It's kinda absurd)

Did I complain about it in my FC, my linkshells, facebook groups? yes I did.
Was I extremely angry and frustrated? yes I was. Did I want to go to that guy's house and punch him in the face? yes I did.

But I didn't think for a second about reporting. As much a dickish move as it were, it was not illegal.

[Avatre]

-Snip-

A lot of the materials(cloths mostly) that I end up selling come from my retainers. Do I undercut people? Not usually. I tend to look at what the last ones sold for(look at the last 10 most of the time), and what it currently is at. If they only sold at lower than currently on the board, I might lower my price from what is currently available by 10%, if that much. Normally I just do it to the nearest 100 for things selling for over 1k, and nearest 1,000 for over 10k, etc.

[Fluffernuff]

Finding a new reason to report, harass, and remove players from the game seems alot more malicious and bannable to me than undercutting.

[Fate_Testarossa]

EDIT2: snippet.

I can understand both sides to be honest. I'm a crafter and I'm playing on Balmung, the most populated server in this game. The competition is extremely fierce and it can be really difficult to turn a profit because of that at times. If I were you I wouldn't neccessarily assume that people do it to crash the market. Instead some people simply know that the market is going to crash soon so they put up items with a huge undercut because in their mind doing that means that they can at least turn some profit before the Market completely crashes. I'm not sure what server you're playing on, but on Balmung it usually takes a day or two until the market naturally crashes on its own.

So to give you an example: I put something up on the MB like 2 hours after a big patch. I put it in for 10m cause no one else is selling said item yet. 2 hours later another person wants to sell the same item. They know that the market is probably going to crash soon as more players are getting their hands on the same item. So they put theirs in for like 3m. They sell it for 3m instantly cause Player X thinks this is a good deal. Fast forward to the next day: A good chunk of players now has this item and the price went down to 1m or less.

So even though huge undercuts sometimes don't seem to make sense at first glance on some servers they actually do make sense.

[Coratanni]

It's posts like the OP's that make me weep for humanity's future. Then I see the responses, and my faith is slowly restored.

[Paladinleeds]

It's posts like the OP's that make me weep for humanity's future. Then I see the responses, and my faith is slowly restored.

But here's the thing, people have put forward the reasons why, so I'm in agreement now that it shouldn't be an offence, but the mods won't close/delete it for some reason even though I've asked them to.

[Niqote]

Basically, what you are asking is to be able to force people to sell their items for what you think they should be sold for.
I don't think that is ok, it's a free market.
Over time, the value of everything decreases because they become more abundant. Heck, Normal crafting Clusters were 10k each at one point in time.

[Paladinleeds]

Basically, what you are asking is to be able to force people to sell their items for what you think they should be sold for.
I don't think that is ok, it's a free market.
Over time, the value of everything decreases because they become more abundant. Heck, Normal crafting Clusters were 10k each at one point in time.

Why would it be about me trying to force people to sell at my prices when someone said I was griefing by undercutting by such a high amount hence me reporting myself - the key word being myself. I am the one who tried to get the GMs to ban for this. Not anybody else, me. And like I said in my last post, I'm in agreement now reading the reasons that it shouldn't be the case. Can I use this thread as a valid reason for SE to permanently ban my entire SE account? Because that feels like that is what needs to happen. Make an example out of me.

[Berilein]

Yes what AlexionSkylark said is what I experience a few times a day with the new 320 crafted stuff. It's always the same person for me killing the prices, I want to punch them so hard. 3m+ undercuts. Weaver almost useless for profit now with the 320 legs costing under 1m, when the materials are over 1m