Stablizing the market(stop undercutting everyone people!)

[Mychael]

Thats a completely unreasonable comparison, as is using almost anything real-world to compare it to gaming lol

Car makers contract out with other production companies to get a fair price. Unless you want to start contracting out with other DoH and DoL this analogy does not work. Esp since even then there is not a fair trade market and other crafters you would agree to buy all their ore from is going to still rely on the markets since they will be able, in alot of cases, get a better price for their merchandise from these markets than from you, thus causing you to pay higher prices and reduce your profits again. Viscous cycle when its not real life with things like quality control and international trading laws to worry about

Anyway what Im saying is as a leathercrafter I can farm up enough skins and sinews to mass produce gear in an hr or so. Alumen, that I need to make skin to leather, is cheap so doesnt cut into profits and if I want it I can spend another hr farming that and come back with a few stacks which will last me forever. So all I really need to do is buy ingots. If I had to buy the leather and the sinew and the alumen and the rubber and the ingots, no I would not expect to make much of a profit, if any at all. And to boot the farming also earns me shards which I can use to make the stuff again saving me more precious gil and raising my profit margins.

And yes lower lvl gear is worth more but at the same time it sells alot slower which causes alot of crafters not to produce it. They would rather sell 5 20k high lvl gloves a day than 1 100k low lvl pair a week

I don't really get the "if it applies in the real world, it shouldn't apply in a game" mindset, so I suppose I'll never really be able to see your viewpoint fairly. So maybe we get to cast spells, but I don't see why it should change principles of economics.

I still stand by what I said. Disciples of the Hand should be able to make money without the associated Disciple of the Land, just not as much.

You make a fair point about lower-level gear selling slower, though.

IMHO, undercutting is alright to make you sell your gear faster. The problem is, everyone thinks they need to undercut the undercutter. So instead of having 10 [Piece of Gear] at 100k, and one at 80k because X is more desperate for quick money than total money, we have one from last week at 100k, one at 90, one at 80, one at 75, one at 70, and one at 65, etc. If you're okay with this, please feel free to hop over.

Contracting is irrelevant. If you don't contract, you'll pay more, but you'll still net profit, or you wouldn't buy the material(s). It should work that way. If the DoH can't make a profit, they shouldn't be willing to pay for the mats. Unfortunately, games have to have something which nets XP, so people will buy mats no matter the price just to skill up. I could understand this for low-/mid-level gear, and for recipes used primarily for skilling up. However, for for gear that people actually want to use, there really should be a profit margin, not a loss margin.