Undercutting

[Brian25]

Items you craft have your signature on them.

It's not a surefire way to find out who owns a retainer as people can relist others' items if they decide they don't need them or to try to control the market. But that's almost certainly how you were found out - the item signature.

Oh duh, I should have realised that. Thank you!

[Mirhd]

Yeah I have no idea how he did it, he must have seen me crafting a ton of them. But he messaged me something along the lines of "I know this may be weird but are you the jerk ruining the market?"

Even at 20k I was still nearly doubling my profit on each item, so it worked out in the end haha.

... Except you can see the name of the crafter on every item they craft. It's, uh, kinda obvious, so I don't know why you're confused as to how this person found out. :P

EDIT: bah, beaten by another poster. oop.

Well, to add to this, I've repeatedly undercut someone by 1 gil just to tick them off if they've been undercutting me repeatedly. If they then decide to tank the market, I just move on to another item. /shrug

[IdowhatIwant]

Yeah, if people continue to undercut me by a couple gil every couple minutes. I will just ruin the market for that item and make profit off something else. I don't have time to watch the market board for hours.

[Eriane_Elis]

As an end game crafter myself whom also undercuts and ensures fair value, undercutting subject comes up usually by first time crafters getting involved in savage drop day with crafted gear. They don't understand the market won't pay 3.5 million for a i580 chest, it's not even worth 25% of that in material costs. People who are in the club know how much material costs are and what a reasonable profit is, not something like 500%

People pay that just fine and it should cost that much considering how much time, cost and effort it takes to reach that point as a omni gatherer / crafter plus the material expenses etc... Look at overmelding, it cost me like 15mil+ just for gathering. I don't remember how much it was for crafting and I didn't fully overmeld but it was about the same. There are those that just want to rule the MB and crash it on day 1, every time. Even though people are gladly paying millions for each piece of armor, they bring it down to 100k in a matter of hours. I don't understand their logic, maybe it's market bots gone wild, one-upping each other every few minutes? It happens every time and it's always the same people competing with each other. This is the perfect time to make everything overpriced because server hopping is problematic during peak-hours, but some people think a quick gil is a quick gil and nothing more. It's something we all learn to accept despite the real cost of gathering and crafting things should be much, much higher in reality. But as long as people are willing to sell at a cheap price, the market will always be against omni-gatherers and omni-crafters.

[Risvertasashi]

People pay that just fine and it should cost that much considering how much time, cost and effort it takes to reach that point as a omni gatherer / crafter plus the material expenses etc... Look at overmelding, it cost me like 15mil+ just for gathering. I don't remember how much it was for crafting and I didn't fully overmeld but it was about the same. There are those that just want to rule the MB and crash it on day 1, every time. Even though people are gladly paying millions for each piece of armor, they bring it down to 100k in a matter of hours. I don't understand their logic, maybe it's market bots gone wild, one-upping each other every few minutes? It happens every time and it's always the same people competing with each other. This is the perfect time to make everything overpriced because server hopping is problematic during peak-hours, but some people think a quick gil is a quick gil and nothing more. It's something we all learn to accept despite the real cost of gathering and crafting things should be much, much higher in reality. But as long as people are willing to sell at a cheap price, the market will always be against omni-gatherers and omni-crafters.

There's actually an economic term for this. It's known as "market correction." Google/your favorite search engine can cover the subject in depth.

[IdowhatIwant]

People pay that just fine and it should cost that much considering how much time, cost and effort it takes to reach that point as a omni gatherer / crafter plus the material expenses etc... Look at overmelding, it cost me like 15mil+ just for gathering. I don't remember how much it was for crafting and I didn't fully overmeld but it was about the same. There are those that just want to rule the MB and crash it on day 1, every time. Even though people are gladly paying millions for each piece of armor, they bring it down to 100k in a matter of hours. I don't understand their logic, maybe it's market bots gone wild, one-upping each other every few minutes? It happens every time and it's always the same people competing with each other. This is the perfect time to make everything overpriced because server hopping is problematic during peak-hours, but some people think a quick gil is a quick gil and nothing more. It's something we all learn to accept despite the real cost of gathering and crafting things should be much, much higher in reality. But as long as people are willing to sell at a cheap price, the market will always be against omni-gatherers and omni-crafters.

How much time, cost and effort it took***
You can level all that stuff very fast with little effort now.

[LystAP]

I undercut drastically sometimes simply because I felt like it. Some days I'm grumpy. Some days I'm feeling whimsical. Some days I just like round numbers. There's no rules against it, and I feel like I am just making items more accessible to more players. Somehow I'm still making money, so I have no reason to become more 'efficient'.

One time an angry competitor messaged me repeatedly and accused me of being a bot. They sent their FC mates to stalk me as well - 'trying to catch me in the act'. I reported them for harrassment and haven't heard from them since. People take the MB way too seriously. Last I checked, the Marketboard isn't the focus of the game.

[wereotter]

Typically I don't undercut. I'll look at what the lowest price is, and list my item for exactly the same amount (or maybe I'll undercut a little to round out the price per item to a multiple of 5 just so the cost is cleaner)

If people are willing to buy at the listed price, there's no reason to undercut, or especially undercut dramatically. Just have a little patience, and yours will sell too... unless of course people crash the market, then even undercutting by only a little still won't have saved you.

[Risvertasashi]

I undercut drastically sometimes simply because I felt like it. Some days I'm grumpy. Some days I'm feeling whimsical. Some days I just like round numbers. There's no rules against it, and I feel like I am just making items more accessible to more players. Somehow I'm still making money, so I have no reason to become more 'efficient'.

One time an angry competitor messaged me repeatedly and accused me of being a bot. They sent their FC mates to stalk me as well - 'trying to catch me in the act'. I reported them for harrassment and haven't heard from them since. People take the MB way too seriously. Last I checked, the Marketboard isn't the focus of the game.

PVP in general tends to make people very emotional, sadly. It's why the devs had to take away chat from The Feast.

[Feidam]

I recently read a thread where someone was denouncing people who undercut on the Market Board, which is something that took me by surprise. I figured that it was something that was normal in every MMO auction house-esque system, or at the very least that's the experience I got since it was prevalent in every MMO I've played up to this point... and in real-life...

But since I'm still relatively new and only just now getting the opportunity to participate in an early expansion economy, I just want to ask, because I've been absolutely vomiting materials onto the Market Board at undercut prices and smiling with greedy glee when they all sell before the person whom I have undercut.

Is this behaviour 'normal' or 'acceptable' in FFXIV?

Depends. Undercutting by a few Gil is normal. Folks that drop the price by half are probably being bought out by folks like me that will turn around wait a few days then get 2x to 3x the price you listed for selling at the normal going rate.