Extreme Undercutting - Should it be a violation?

[Furious]

More importantly this is a game I use for entertainment so the value of my time is the same whether I'm running dungeons or farming materials.

What I'm saying is there is no difference in the value of the time at all. I play the game for entertainment and what I'm doing at any given time is what I feel like being entertained by. If I decide to gather it doesn't matter if I get ten items or one hundred as I am there to enjoy gathering. The game isn't a job with some return on investment point in a spreadsheet. The only intrinsic value on my time is how it relates to real life. In real life I'm retired but still consult. When consulting my time does have a value at $250/hr. When I'm not consulting, relaxing and enjoying my free time it is priceless.

Your arguments are non-sequiter. The game isn't a job, but part of the game revolves around having gil available, and earning or creating gil costs time. You say relaxing and enjoying your free time is priceless, but it's not; it has a price. What you actually mean when you say that is that the opportunity cost of enjoying your free time is worth atleast as much as what you lose in doing so. "Priceless" is one of those terms we use to justify things to ourselves, but its colloquial meaning isn't the same as its literal meaning.

Please note that nobody is saying "don't do what you enjoy". Just realise that spending an hour mining rocks may be a worse investment of your time than running maps and spending the outcome on rocks that other people mine. If you still enjoy mining rocks, do that, but it's not without opportunity cost potentially.

[alimdia]

You kinda missed the point of "The game isn't a job", the point is that they don't care about the opportunity cost.

[Furious]

You kinda missed the point of "The game isn't a job", the point is that they don't care about the opportunity cost.

So what? Whether you care about losing the gil or not doesn't remove the opportunity cost.

Nobody is arguing that you cannot (or even should not) do what you enjoy, opportunity cost be damned. You can do whatever you like, this is a game. That does not in any way invalidate or remove the opportunity cost of doing so. If you choose an option that makes you 1 gil per minute over an option that makes you 3 gil per minute, no amount of enjoyment gets you back that 2gil per minute loss in the time you spend doing option A. You have effectively paid 2gil per minute for your enjoyment.

Saying that your free time is priceless, or saying that happiness is more important than money, or saying you don't care about the cost, or whatever other adage or colloquialism you want to use to describe the situation doesn't change the fact. You are paying 2 gil per minute for your fun. If your fun is worth 2 gil per minute, great! Good choice for you! That doesn't mean you didn't lose that gil.

[Texa]

That doesn't mean you didn't lose that gil.

You can't really lose something that you view as being worthless.

[Furious]

You can't really lose something that you view as being worthless.

Of course you can.

Firstly and foremost, it's impossible for gil to be worthless in the context of the game, since worth is defined in gil. Money has no intrinsic value (unless you want to count the materials it is made from); the value of other things are defined in terms of money.

Again; if your fun times are more valuable than the gil you lost, that's good for you, but it doesn't change the inextricable loss of the gil. When you say "you view it as being worthless", that is what you mean. You value the fun as being worth more than the gil (and, because of the prior sentence, what is meant by that is not "my fun is worth more than 2 gil", but "my fun is worth more than whatever I could have bought or done with the 2 gil I don't have now". It might be the case that gil is relatively worthless to you, but that doesn't mean that gil is worthless, and thus that you didn't lose that gil.

[Texa]

Of course you can.

For something to exist from your perspective you have to pay attention to it in some way or experience it passively through the 5 senses. If you pay Gil no mind then it has no worth to you, you don't pay attention, making its loss no different from you exhaling carbon dioxide. All things essential to playing the game come from tomes, the msq, sidequests, duty finder, or the challenge log. You can get enough Gil for teleports, melds, and repairs from running dungeons and doing your challenge logs. I know players who do this. Gil exists as nothing as but a number in a menu for them and has no real presence in their lives.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

I don't understand, are we still on the topic of whether or not "extreme undercutting" in the MB should be a violation of the ToS and considered harassment? It feels like people have gone off by the wayside for several pages.

Anyway, I'll weigh in that people should be allowed to post an item at whatever cost they want. That of course doesn't necessarily mean it will either sell exorbitantly or even give you a return on what you paid to attain it. Here's the thing, if you think that the price someone is listing something is absurd then you should buy it and re-list it. If you're right then that means they are anticipating less demand for the product than you. As an example, I listed a bunch of Rank V materia at a price that was much more realistic pre-Stormblood. Sure it took a while to sell, but it still sold for the price I put it at despite being nearly 50x as much because that's how much people are willing to pay for it. Essentially, if your item truly is worth the price you put it at then it will sell at that price regardless of how low it currently is due to a few people undercutting the price.

[Furious]

For something to exist from your perspective you have to pay attention to it in some way or experience it passively through the 5 senses. If you pay Gil no mind then it has no worth to you, you don't pay attention, making its loss no different from you exhaling carbon dioxide. All things essential to playing the game come from tomes, the msq, sidequests, duty finder, or the challenge log. You can get enough Gil for teleports, melds, and repairs from running dungeons and doing your challenge logs. I know players who do this. Gil exists as nothing as but a number in a menu for them and has no real presence in their lives.

Ergo: for those players, the opportunity cost of not gaining gil via more profitable activities is worth the offset because they don't need as much gil. If they didn't enjoy the other activities which proffered them gil, this would not be the case. For other players, running dungeons and doing challenge logs is not fun, and they would prefer to garner gil via other profitable options.

For your type of players, the opportunity cost still exists; its just worth the trade in their case because they enjoy the activities that give them enough gil to support themselves. That again does not remove that opportunity cost; it just balances it.

I don't understand, are we still on the topic of whether or not "extreme undercutting" in the MB should be a violation of the ToS and considered harassment? It feels like people have gone off by the wayside for several pages.

Anyway, I'll weigh in that people should be allowed to post an item at whatever cost they want. That of course doesn't necessarily mean it will either sell exorbitantly or even give you a return on what you paid to attain it. Here's the thing, if you think that the price someone is listing something is absurd then you should buy it and re-list it. If you're right then that means they are anticipating less demand for the product than you. As an example, I listed a bunch of Rank V materia at a price that was much more realistic pre-Stormblood. Sure it took a while to sell, but it still sold for the price I put it at despite being nearly 50x as much because that's how much people are willing to pay for it. Essentially, if your item truly is worth the price you put it at then it will sell at that price regardless of how low it currently is due to a few people undercutting the price.

We're 21 pages deep in a thread that asked a nonsense question in the first place.

[Princess_Momoka]

You can't really lose something that you view as being worthless.

Furious well said, liked all your posts, for texa...If you are gathering, you are doing so for gil gain, so calling that worthless makes no sense to me. If you are gathering to craft or gathering to sell, it is costing you something. I was only trying to help Claviusnex understand what opportunity cost really means and was wondering if they consider the price of something when picking to gather. Like my example with the level 70 node, 35 node, where the 70 node sells for 200 each while the 35 node sells for 500 each. I wanted to know what he would do. If it was me, I would only gather from the 35 node, sell excess, then buy the 70 node stuff, this leads the the biggest gil gain you can have gathering in this situation.

I wanted to show there is no such thing as free, if you are doing A, you can't do B while doing A, so not doing B is costing you, regardless of what your view point is.

For something to exist from your perspective you have to pay attention to it in some way or experience it passively through the 5 senses. If you pay Gil no mind then it has no worth to you, you don't pay attention, making its loss no different from you exhaling carbon dioxide. All things essential to playing the game come from tomes, the msq, sidequests, duty finder, or the challenge log. You can get enough Gil for teleports, melds, and repairs from running dungeons and doing your challenge logs. I know players who do this. Gil exists as nothing as but a number in a menu for them and has no real presence in their lives.

Then why gather? You have a self defeating argument.

Also finally found it:
https://youtu.be/aWbWQ9EPP4I?t=40
when you select extreme undercutting ^ that plays, first there is beginner undercutting, small beeping sounds, then advance undercutting, faster beeping sounds to warn you that you may be losing money, expert undercutting, blaring sirens that you might be in danger of losing lots of money... then there is EXTREME! ITS DANGEROUS! causing people to scream out in horror of the vast undercutting and market crashing

[Avatre]

If you are gathering, you are doing so for gil gain,

I gather to get maps, to do Auquapolis/Canals to get minions I do not have. Not to sell them, that comes as a bonus much later if it does happen where I get duplicates.