Are all BTN stupid or is it just on my server?

[MsQi]

With the way gathering works the market is destined to become oversaturated.

If you don't like the price you can alway trying buying it up and flipping it.

[tdb]

If there is a ton of supply and everyone wants to sell stock, prices are going to plummet. Economics isn't some kind of fair game, idk how this community can't grasp its head around that.

While this is true in principle, there are some pretty crucial differences between video game and real world economies which make them behave differently. Video game economies tend to be much more volatile and unpredictable.

The scale of things is very small. There aren't that many endgame crafters on each server, and some of them will gather their own materials. The market for endgame gear on patch day isn't exactly huge either. A small economy dealing in highly valuable items means the supply and demand is going to be very spiky, which destabilizes prices. In the real world any non-niche product is likely to have millions of customers, resulting in a much more steady flow and more stable prices.

The cost of entry is very low or nonexistent - for materials you can literally just go out and gather the stuff quickly and in decent quantities. There's no need to invest in any kind of production infrastructure, and the investments you can make (better gear, expensive overmelds) result in only a small increase in productivity. In the real world you could go into the forest and pick some berries, but someone who has the capital to set up a farm will outproduce you 100x or more. The consequence of this is that in a video game it's easier for someone without a clue to disrupt the market.

Players don't have to make a living inside the game. Video game characters do not have running costs like food or rent, so players are not incentivized to put any value on their time. In the real world you have to consider that if you can do a thing X hours per month, you have to get at least Y money per hour to pay your bills. If you run a factory there will be many more things to consider if you want to make a profit. Someone who also doesn't have to make a living in the real world (unemployed on welfare, underage on summer vacation) is able to put all their efforts towards manipulating the video game economy if they so wish.

A large portion of the people on the market don't have a grasp of economy. They're not familiar with things like opportunity cost. If you use some amount of materials to craft an item, you lose the opportunity to sell those materials. It's common to see items being sold for less than the price of their component materials, because people don't bother to do market research. This does happen in the real world but there's usually a catch, like video game consoles being sold at a loss because the profits are made from the games. Or a clearance sale for an old product. If someone actually sells their main product at a loss they'll be out of business very soon.

Items can appear out of nothing. This is hardly a concern with endgame crafted gear, but retainers bring back all sorts of older items from ventures. In this case there's practically no opportunity cost involved in obtaining those items (the venture currency is basically free because you get so many GC seals from turning in all the dungeon trash loot), so players are inclined to just get rid of the items fast, without doing market research. This obviously does not happen in the real world.

Market tools in most games are inadequate. This actually warrants several sub-items.

There's limited or no market history. FFXIV is already ahead of many by showing a history of sold items. But that history is very short, often too short to reveal any significant trends. The spiky nature of the market I mentioned above combined with short history means that you may see a local trend from someone having just bought out half the supply and prices have gone up, but a longer history or a graph could reveal that this kind of surge will be followed by a period of little or no sales and the prices will crash again.

There's no way to buy partial stacks of items or set up flexible pricing. In many cases a crafter who needs only a few items is forced to pay for a large amount of extra items because there's no listings with a suitable stack size. Gatherers have to either put a lot of work (and market slots) into splitting stacks, or sell large stacks which take longer to sell and may yield less gil per item.

There's no way to place buy orders. A crafter who regularly crafts items can't announce "I'm willing to pay X gil for material Y, up to Z units". This is another thing which could stabilize a spiky market; the buy orders provide a lower limit for prices and allow buyers to compete with offers as well as sellers.

In the real world all these are possible. The only video game I've seen to implement them so far is EVE Online.

[MsQi]

Market tools in most games are inadequate. This actually warrants several sub-items.

There's limited or no market history. FFXIV is already ahead of many by showing a history of sold items. But that history is very short, often too short to reveal any significant trends. The spiky nature of the market I mentioned above combined with short history means that you may see a local trend from someone having just bought out half the supply and prices have gone up, but a longer history or a graph could reveal that this kind of surge will be followed by a period of little or no sales and the prices will crash again.

There's no way to buy partial stacks of items or set up flexible pricing. In many cases a crafter who needs only a few items is forced to pay for a large amount of extra items because there's no listings with a suitable stack size. Gatherers have to either put a lot of work (and market slots) into splitting stacks, or sell large stacks which take longer to sell and may yield less gil per item.

There's no way to place buy orders. A crafter who regularly crafts items can't announce "I'm willing to pay X gil for material Y, up to Z units". This is another thing which could stabilize a spiky market; the buy orders provide a lower limit for prices and allow buyers to compete with offers as well as sellers.

In the real world all these are possible. The only video game I've seen to implement them so far is EVE Online.

RIFT has many of those. I don't recall buy orders, but you can buy partial stacks and all kinds of market analysis.

There is also no competition for nodes. Everything is there for everyone and getting rare items is usually just a matter of knowing when and where.

[SavishSalacious]

I do this as a crafter, I’ll take over an entire market section. First I start by crafting 40 items of what ever is selling the fastest. The. I start my listing 1000 Gil to 10k Gil under the last listed item. Then I go all the way down to about 1000 Gil. Completely destroying the pricing of that item and making ME the only one you buy the items from.

This kinda how our market works today. The one who has the most supplies and for the cheapest is the one you want. And since I am a crafter and a gatherer, it costs me NO Gil to over run a market. And I have no shame in destroying markets this way either.

Cry harder.

[tdb]

This kinda how our market works today. The one who has the most supplies and for the cheapest is the one you want. And since I am a crafter and a gatherer, it costs me NO Gil to over run a market. And I have no shame in destroying markets this way either.

Opportunity cost. It may not cost you gil but it costs time, and there might be another thing which would yield more gil in the same time.

I don't care though. I have more in-game money than I'm likely to ever spend so I rarely craft for profit.

[Vickii]

supply & demand

If there is a ton of supply and everyone wants to sell stock, prices are going to plummet. Economics isn't some kind of fair game, idk how this community can't grasp its head around that.

Also, yes, bots. This isn't anyone being stupid, it's just a market crash. That happens.

(also lmao to anyone who ever complains about undercutting. Start playing smarter, not greedier.)

Nope. People were buying them at 8k, 7k, 6k, 5k and 500gil. The items that they make with them haven’t fluctuated in price nearly as much. The economy doesn’t benefit in any way, if anything it gives the BTN less Gil to spend on the crafted items and crashes the economy. These items would eventually settle but could easily settle at 3-4K and the demand would still be there.

But completely crashing it in 12 hours is stupidity. And I have an economics degree before you go on about how economies work.

[Vickii]

I do this as a crafter, I’ll take over an entire market section. First I start by crafting 40 items of what ever is selling the fastest. The. I start my listing 1000 Gil to 10k Gil under the last listed item. Then I go all the way down to about 1000 Gil. Completely destroying the pricing of that item and making ME the only one you buy the items from.

This kinda how our market works today. The one who has the most supplies and for the cheapest is the one you want. And since I am a crafter and a gatherer, it costs me NO Gil to over run a market. And I have no shame in destroying markets this way either.

Cry harder.

That’s an absolutely terrible way to make money though. You’d actually make more selling at the higher price over a longer period of time and you’d be free to do other things to make more money.

Think about it. You spend time out of your life sitting by a market board in a video game when you could be doing far more amazing things with that same time. It’s you who should be crying xD

[Gemina]

I do this as a crafter, I’ll take over an entire market section. First I start by crafting 40 items of what ever is selling the fastest. The. I start my listing 1000 Gil to 10k Gil under the last listed item. Then I go all the way down to about 1000 Gil. Completely destroying the pricing of that item and making ME the only one you buy the items from.

This kinda how our market works today. The one who has the most supplies and for the cheapest is the one you want. And since I am a crafter and a gatherer, it costs me NO Gil to over run a market. And I have no shame in destroying markets this way either.

Cry harder.

All I have to do to tank your marketing scheme is set my prices lower than yours. But I don't even have to, because you're doing that yourself. All I really have to do is set the MB price the same as yours, and I can instantly rely on you to undercut it. Then I do it again, and again, and again until you undercut the item so badly that I buy up all your stock and redistribute it while you go out gathering and crafting again. During this time, I place everything YOU just crafted/gathered back on the MB at higher prices, and profit from your greed, or keep the items for myself and profit from your time.

Monopolization doesn't work in the game the same as it does in the real world. Those who do it, or try tend to end up frustrated like the OP. Just like the real world, there is always a bigger fish. Time is also money, so while profit is 100% when you gather and craft yourself, spending that time on an item that is steadily decreasing in price means that you are not making the best use of it.

[Bsrking5]

Well since its possible to lock out any other listing with extra retainers and market bots is it any surprise that the easiest stuff to flip drops like a rock?

[tdb]

And I have an economics degree before you go on about how economies work.

If I may impose on you for a bit, I'm kinda curious to hear if what I posted above about video game vs. real world economies makes any sense? I don't have an economics degree so it's mostly my own general experience and deduction.