Extreme Market Board Undercutting is a Problem. Who ultimately benefits from this?

[Big_Bap]

Trust me, it does, and it's a little silly to think it doesn't when it happens in virtually every MMO on the market. They have bots that can run through the entire MSQ without use of hacks, so making one that simply undercuts people at fixed intervals would comparatively be a joke.

There's at least two players who are known to do so on Cactuar and it's not just me who's noticed.

It's gone past being simple suspicion at this point when one of them is almost constantly DoL botting and observably checks the retainer bell after every single unspoiled node it gathers from (Which is precisely when it does its one gil undercuts) on an endless loop 24/7 following the exact same path to the bell each time.

Funny how you keep whining about that without anything to back it up. Move on.

[rance-sama]

CAPITALISM HO

[KageTokage]

Funny how you keep whining about that without anything to back it up. Move on.

And how do you propose I prove it, exactly?

It's not like people are going to come and watch these players doing what they do even if I could mention their names.

It also doesn't change the fact that these players are known DoL/H botters, so it's not much of a stretch to assume that when they're almost immediately undercutting anyone who tries to sell lower then them that there's more foul play involved.

[Big_Bap]

And how do you propose I prove it, exactly?

It's not like people are going to come and watch these players doing what they do even if I could mention their names.

Show us exactly what you've described

If you're so smart and have figured out their pattern, why don't you undercut their items to ridiculously low prices before they adjust theirs? Why haven't you made a fortune out of that instead of whining on here...

[MomomiMomi]

You know you're just losing money that way, right? Unless you only undercut by 1. Lowering a price drastically doesn't actually speed up sales. It's just like real life. When people want to buy something, they already have the money for it. If it isn't selling it's because there is no demand, not because it's too expensive.

If you do undercut drastically and get resellers buying your items instead, then you're creating a market bubble that won't last, and you just murder your own market for a long time and lose even more money.

All of the people with warped views on how markets work end up ruining it for everyone and themselves for the sake of being impatient and trying to fart out as many sales as they can instead of making real money.

You're completely wrong on that. As others have stated, just because you have the money to purchase something doesn't mean you're willing to buy.

Want some real life examples? I never, ever buy video games at full price. I wait for them to go on sale. And even if a sale isn't good enough, I still won't bite. I'll wait until they reach what I consider them to be worth.

Or grocery shopping. A normal price for something might be 89 cents. I won't buy and will even do without it at that price. Even when it reaches 59 cents, I might buy a few, but not many. Once they reach my preferred price, 49 cents, that's when I buy a month's supply.

In-game, if something is too expensive, I'll either do without it, or I'll obtain it myself. For example, if I'm gearing up one of my jobs, and it would cost me 200k to purchase a set of gear, I'd rather just craft it myself. I can afford 200k easily. I have more than 1000x that much. But I'm not going to pay it.

Also, "too expensive" is a factor of demand. "Demand" is not only wanting something, but having the money and being willing to pay for it.

[DumdogsWorld]

Snip!

I envy you for being able to buy any groceries for 49 cents.

[KageTokage]

Show us exactly what you've described

If you're so smart and have figured out their pattern, why don't you undercut their items to ridiculously low prices before they adjust theirs? Why haven't you made a fortune out of that instead of whining on here...

There's not exactly a "fortune" to be made when the 450 gear has tanked as low as 80K a piece and the bot is usually willing to drop to half that before it stops undercutting.

Buying them out accomplishes little because they have excess stock they'll just relist immediately and even if you did manage to deplete their stock you still have other competition to worry about. It really is not something you can exploit for any meaningful gain.

In any case, people can choose what they want to believe, but I find the notion of thinking undercut bots somehow don't exist in a game as heavily exploited as XIV a bit silly when they're still a problem even in heavily enforced MMOs like WoW.

[Alucard135]

Funny how you keep whining about that without anything to back it up. Move on.

Just because there's no solid in-game proof, doesn't mean they don't exist. Those that use them explicitly discuss them on Discord and a simple googling will tell you that they exist.

I'm curious though, as to why you sound so confident that they don't exist.

[NessaWyvern]

Nowadays, I mostly just gather my own stuff (so I always make a profit) and then use those to make mats that people can't be bothered to make themselves. I generally avoid large priced items, as they generally get undercut to hell before they actually sell.

[Gralna]

Also another aspect of MB to look at, is that listed price isn't the same as selling price.

Seen plenty of items that when I looked them up on MB and only listed items were going for 1M+ gil, but you look at history and the item is averaging about 100k. If you're just looking at listed prices, next person to list at 100k would appear to be grossly undercutting when all they're doing is listing at what market value is for the item.