Market feels broken. I'm curious why -- and does this diminish crafting?

[Luminari]

There are indeed people that purposely crash a market so they can snap up all the people that rush to undercut or if the bots undercut they can snap them up and then sell on another World Server to make a profit. It's weird. But right now there's quite a few selling these stacks worth millions on a few of the pricier map mats, the markets dropped rather drastically and the way it's worked out it looks like it's the same person or a group of related people.

https://imgur.com/a/0TnrnXZ

[Sotaris]

There are indeed people that purposely crash a market so they can snap up all the people that rush to undercut or if the bots undercut they can snap them up and then sell on another World Server to make a profit. It's weird. But right now there's quite a few selling these stacks worth millions on a few of the pricier map mats, the markets dropped rather drastically and the way it's worked out it looks like it's the same person or a group of related people.

https://imgur.com/a/0TnrnXZ

I seen that alot of my server with the Calf Skins.

[DrWho2010]

I seen that alot of my server with the Calf Skins.

Calf Leather dropped in price because it's become more available since the patch added a new rare crafting mat to the treasure map dungeons. not because of undercutters

[Sotaris]

Calf Leather dropped in price because it's become more available since the patch added a new rare crafting mat to the treasure map dungeons. not because of undercutters

Not when you see 20+ listings of 99 stacks though.

[Kes13a]

Not when you see 20+ listings of 99 stacks though.

DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

[Jojoya]

DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

We've always seen a big price drop with the release of a new major patch and a new map crafting material. That's nothing new. The old material will start dropping outside of the dungeon, increasing supply at the same time demand for the material falls off.

What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

[Prrringles]

... What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

Same is fairly recently happening on the EU servers. Stacks of 50/99 calf leather and even stacks of 50+ frontier cloth. Always the same retainers and always at a "low" price. Funny thing is that they always get posted around the same time every day. For example, around 6AM and 7PM listings of large stacks of calf leather and frontier cloth are posted for cheap. People are even "camping" the MB for those listings so they can buy it out.

Oh and the same goes for maps. They always get bought by a lvl 19 mule characted around the same time every day. Talking 50+ maps here btw. It's sad really.

[Chaletamale]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

[Denzyl]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

Not quite true, on a couple of occasions I have noticed Sell Orders where the price was so low, it was a lot less than selling the item direct to the nearest Vendor.

On the last one I saw I made 370 Gil profit buying them up and selling them to the Vendor

As for Retainer returns spoiling Crafting, across my Characters I have 7 Retainers who Quick Venture for me.

In the last week alone I have had 5 'Stuffed Alphas', 4 'Cannonballs' & 3 'Nameday Cakes'

[Jojoya]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

If the listings are remaining on the MB long enough for an undercut war to drop the price close to 0, it's not the undercutting that's the problem. It's the supply on the MB compared to the demand. Items that have demand equal to or greater than the supply don't last long enough on the MB for undercutting to become a problem.

When the supply is that much higher than the demand, it's usually not worth listing the item unless you don't have anything else to list.

Increasing the sell to vendor value would be a mistake because that's one of the way RMT fuels itself - vendor off things that won't sell on the MB. SE has already chopped vendor value on a lot of items to combat that.