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

[Ammokkx]

Look at it on real world terms. Cyberpunk just released right.. shop 1 sells it at 49.99. Shop 2 sells it at 49.99. If shop 3 sells it at 10.00 wouldn’t you say they were stupid and illogical?

I mean, some shops do sell it at 10. Countries with less buying power in their currency will, seen globally, be buying the game at a much more "discounted" price compared to if you'd be buying it in euros or dollars. So in that way, it isn't stupid and illogical!

Your example doesn't even make sense anyway because that would assume they're all in the same market. They're not. Each marketboard is its own economy independent from the other servers. If the prices are down, you have no choice but to price down too. You can't just go on another server and sell it. People matching that price aren't stupid for matching it, and the people crashing it aren't stupid either because they have different priorities.

Damn near everyone in this thread disagrees with you for solid reasons and all you keep doing is repeating the same "BUT IT'S PRICED HIGHER ELSEWHERE" argument as if that's relevant to fuck-anything. Get over it already, god.

[Vickii]

I mean, some shops do sell it at 10. Countries with less buying power in their currency will, seen globally, be buying the game at a much more "discounted" price compared to if you'd be buying it in euros or dollars. So in that way, it isn't stupid and illogical!

Your example doesn't even make sense anyway because that would assume they're all in the same market. They're not. Each marketboard is its own economy independent from the other servers. If the prices are down, you have no choice but to price down too. You can't just go on another server and sell it. People matching that price aren't stupid for matching it, and the people crashing it aren't stupid either because they have different priorities.

Damn near everyone in this thread disagrees with you for solid reasons and all you keep doing is repeating the same "BUT IT'S PRICED HIGHER ELSEWHERE" argument as if that's relevant to fuck-anything. Get over it already, god.

1) never said it’s priced higher elsewhere. Said it sells at the higher price.
2) Damn near everyone in this thread has a nearly empty bank account and their experience of markets is FF14. I have an economics degree and a store.
3) can you link me to where I can buy cyberpunk for £10 please?

[Ammokkx]

1) never said it’s priced higher elsewhere. Said it sells at the higher price.

...Which would mean it's priced higher. In a different market.

2) Damn near everyone in this thread has a nearly empty bank account and their experience of markets is FF14. I have an economics degree and a store.

Damn near everyone in this thread has also been playing the videogame we're both talking about for a long time and been doing just fine on the gil situation. It's almost like your economics degree is worthless in a videogame where it doesn't apply, and bringing it up like it makes you some kind of authority actually looks worse for you than if you'd never mentioned it at all.

3) can you link me to where I can buy cyberpunk for £10 please?

Can you do some research of your own for a change?

[Vickii]

...Which would mean it's priced higher. In a different market.



Damn near everyone in this thread has also been playing the videogame we're both talking about for a long time and been doing just fine on the gil situation. It's almost like your economics degree is worthless in a videogame where it doesn't apply, and bringing it up like it makes you some kind of authority actually looks worse for you than if you'd never mentioned it at all.



Can you do some research of your own for a change?

Firstly you don’t need to be so hostile. Secondly yes, economics degree is worthless precisely because people in the game do not act how you would expect people to act, hence me saying it was illogical and stupid.

Thirdly, no one is talking about about other servers and currencies but you. The discussion has always been about the price of something on a server. I assume you’re trying to compare other realms to foreign currency but in general it’s much of a muchness on the same dataserver.

If someone were to sell cyberpunk in the U.K. for 10 it would be stupid and illogical. Which is what these people on MB are doing.

[tdb]

So firstly your examples and mine don’t match up. Both in my real time example and my latest one the item was selling at the higher price in a timely manner.

How fast is not fast enough? In my example does someone need 1000g so badly that theyre willing to give up 4000g for the sake of a couple of hours? Price should only come down when either a) it can’t be sold for that price or b) you urgently need the money.

You seem to be thinking about this in the context of a single sale. Sure, if you have one item (or stack of items) to sell, it doesn't really matter if it takes an hour or a day to sell.

I'm looking at this from the perspective of an ongoing business though. If lowering the price drives some of the competition away, you'll have a larger quantity of sales and may make more money per week despite one item selling for less. It's hard to predict whether or not enough others will give up though. And of course there's the cost of producing the items, but as we've established many players consider their time to be free.

Would you just welcome competition who sells at the same price as you, even if it cut your revenue to half? To a quarter?

Look at it on real world terms. Cyberpunk just released right.. shop 1 sells it at 49.99. Shop 2 sells it at 49.99. If shop 3 sells it at 10.00 wouldn’t you say they were stupid and illogical?

Putting aside for the moment all the details why this does not apply to Cyberpunk 2077, there are reasons why it doesn't always make sense for real world stores to compete with price. If Cyberpunk 2077 was 49.99 on Steam and 39.99 on Epic, I'd buy it on Steam. Why? Because all of my other games and all of my friends are on Steam. It's more convenient to me to have everything in the same place. If Epic was selling it at 10.00, maybe I'd consider getting it there instead. Yes, customer loyalty can be a powerful thing. I also buy my groceries at one particular supermarket and don't even bother comparing prices with the one across the street, because I'm used to the brands this one sells and I know where to find them on the shelves. I prefer to order my computer parts from local stores even though they can be tens of percents more expensive than ordering from abroad, because I know I can get good customer support in my own language in case something goes wrong.

None of these apply to video games like FFXIV. Price is literally the only way to stand out from the competition as a seller, and price is literally the only thing buyers use when deciding whose product to buy. So of course sellers are going to compete with price.

You may also have noticed that Epic is actually giving out games for free (not brand new titles like CP2077, but many well known games). They're losing money with that since they're still paying the developers for each "sale". You might say they're stupid and illogical. But they're doing this to build up their customer base. They want players to have other games and friends on Epic to lower the competitive advantage Steam has for being the established player on the field. They've been doing this for two years, and in fact have increased the amount of free games offered, so I guess it's working out for them. But again, this does not apply to FFXIV since you can't offer any perks for loyal customers.

My argument is sound and based on fact. I don’t see why you would try to argue otherwise. There’s literally no benefit to cutting the price heavily while the item will sell at that higher price if you don’t urgently need Gil.

If you undercut diligently enough, your items are the cheapest most of the time, and you'll get most of the sales. Of course it makes sense to only undercut in small amounts. I have no idea why some people cut 30-50% off the price all at once.

[Ammokkx]

Firstly you don’t need to be so hostile.

I'm sick and tired of this thread being on the frontpage because you just can't help yourself replying to whoever the latest poster is in a losing argument. Forgive me my snark.

Secondly yes, economics degree is worthless precisely because people in the game do not act how you would expect people to act, hence me saying it was illogical and stupid.

If people aren't acting like how you expect they would, if they are doing this consistently, and if none of your research lines up with it...

...maaaaaybe the degree isn't as relevant as you think? Or maybe you're applying it too literally? Or maybe, just maybe, there are so many factors in the virtual marketboard of an online videogame that a degree dealing with real-life economics is for a large part worthless because absolutely none of the nuance is or can be properly mirrored in FFXIV? It's fine to look at the game through the lens as someone with a degree, hell, it could pose an interesting study all its own... but it does not make you an authority. The degree makes you an authority of a real-life market, but not the one of FFXIV. Come back to me when you've actually centered your masters thesis around videogame economies, then I will start taking this argument to authority seriously (which, as a person with a degree, you should know is a logical fallacy.)

Thirdly, no one is talking about about other servers and currencies but you. The discussion has always been about the price of something on a server. I assume you’re trying to compare other realms to foreign currency but in general it’s much of a muchness on the same dataserver.

If you're going to bring in the argument of a store pricing a game at a different one compared to another store, I am going to explain to you why that is a bad argument. Either you
A: Ignore the fact that in real life there may be a reason behind the difference in price, such as a difference in buying power
B: Are ignoring the fact that a real-world good who's price is set by a sole distributor and which an individual store has almost no sway over is a bad comparison to a free market of everyone shooting the shit
or
C: Aren't taking into account that the only thing that matters to the individual player is whether or not they achieved their personal goal, even if that goal is something as "stupid" as crashing a market.

You can rage against the heavens until you are blue in the face, you can insult people all you like, you can think "everyone but me is stupid" as much as you please... but it doesn't change the fact the market has crashed, nobody had an "illogical" reason for doing it and all you are doing is continually proving that, for all your degree-having goodness, you do not know what you are talking about.

You are not using any of the knowledge gained through your degree to bend the market of XIV to your whims.

And one more thing; No, I was not bringing up the difference in regional pricing to somehow draw a parallel with the buying power of an individual server. Quite frankly, that's such a nebulous concept that even my galaxy brain would struggle to define it. What I am saying is that the pricing of one marketboard struggles to affect the pricing of another. I have seen wild swings in glamour gear pricing; I've seen Tsukuyomi's weapons listed for 1,8 mil on one server and 4 mil on another, both with multiple sellers in those markets. You are not, honestly, going to sit here and tell me those sellers are somehow "stupid" are you? Because even if a person on the 1.8 server priced theirs ar 3.5, say, all that would happen is that some other guy's 1.8 mil sword would be sold before theirs as the listing remains static. Even if the other guy follows suit, Tsukuyomi's materials are only about 1.8 mil themselves, so someone else crafts a quick blade, puts it up for 2.4 or something and the price is down anyway. The other players don't have any choice but to sell at that price because they cannot sell on other marketboards. Their home board is the only one they have.

For the love of god, your thread premise was bad and your argumentation so far has been nonsensical and full of fallacies and false comparisons. For someone with a degree, you sure aren't showing your mettle with it.

[Mavrias]

So firstly your examples and mine don’t match up. Both in my real time example and my latest one the item was selling at the higher price in a timely manner.

How fast is not fast enough? In my example does someone need 1000g so badly that theyre willing to give up 4000g for the sake of a couple of hours? Price should only come down when either a) it can’t be sold for that price or b) you urgently need the money.

Look at it on real world terms. Cyberpunk just released right.. shop 1 sells it at 49.99. Shop 2 sells it at 49.99. If shop 3 sells it at 10.00 wouldn’t you say they were stupid and illogical?

My argument is sound and based on fact. I don’t see why you would try to argue otherwise. There’s literally no benefit to cutting the price heavily while the item will sell at that higher price if you don’t urgently need Gil.

Cyberpunk is priced at $49.99 at most shops because the provide (CDPR) is pricing at a certain point due to their labor costs, and the stores want to make a profit.

There's no real good comparison to XIV because XIV has no labor costs or material costs other than time if you are willing to gather your own resources. In XIV you can price goods at whatever you like and still technically make a profit.

[tdb]

There's no real good comparison to XIV because XIV has no labor costs or material costs other than time if you are willing to gather your own resources. In XIV you can price goods at whatever you like and still technically make a profit.

... with the caveat that if you sell low enough, some other activity might be more profitable. But then we also have to consider that not all players are interested in all activities. And gathering goes well with watching TV since it only needs fairly minimal attention every five minutes.

Actually, let's try to calculate the income from some activities.

Leveling roulette gives almost 12k per run if you qualify for the adventurer in need bonus, and double that for the first run of the day. If one run takes 15 minutes (possibly overly optimistic given the skill of random players), that makes around 50k gil per hour, plus 400 allegory which can be turned into materials and sold for another 50k. So total 100k per hour.

Treasure maps give a guaranteed 3-4k from the chest, and if a dungeon spawns it gives an average of about 15k. But the dungeon also takes much longer than the chest. With some handwaving I'm going to say they also give 50k per hour as direct gil. If you're lucky you might get calf leather which sells for a million gil, but that's a fairly low chance. I'll give loot 200k gil per hour on average, for a total of 250k per hour. But treasure maps are a limited resource and if you need to buy them you might spend 50-100k per hour.

Daily hunts give a total of 52500 gil and take maybe an hour to complete. But they're once per day and you can't buy more.

Exarchic items sell for 100-400k per item on my server and require 30-50k gil worth of materials. If a casual crafter can make 8 items per hour, that's a profit of 1-2 million per hour. But it takes a fair amount of investment to level up the DoH classes and gear them up.

Now let's compare to gathering. With halfway decent gear you can get at least 25 items from a single node, but +2 nodes are very common and give 33 items instead. The interval between nodes is 5 minutes 50 seconds, meaning just over 10 nodes per hour. That's about 300 items collected per hour. Selling them at 500 gil apiece give a total of 150k gil per hour - not at all bad consider how little attention it requires.

[Coletergeist]

Jesus guys it's not rocket science. Lower sales = sells faster.


/endthread

[FoxyAreku]

There was a large influx of gatherers and crafters when the restoration and crafting rework launched, and ever since the markets have been plagued by people who don't know how to undercut without completely tanking the market.

The new crafted gear went from 2 mil a piece to 100k a piece in under a week on my server as an example, and it's honestly really killed my drive to even bother.

Sure, it's great for buyers, as I know someone will say, but this stuff has to be worth it for the seller too, and right now high level crafting just isn't worth it when I can make more selling low level gear and junk.