Undercutting

[Sclair0]

Isnt undercutting part of balancing the economy? If someone puts up a ton of stuff way low for the amount of effort to make/get it then you can buy out all their stuff and make a major profit. Then eventually the market stabilises behind a price right?

Sure it'd be nice if everything stayed at a million gill sale wise, but as patches continue and people jump into the market supply goes up and demand goes down, natural for prices to tank.

[Skivvy]

Price things the way you want. You decide the value of your time, not others.

If someone thinks you've listed it too low, they're welcome to buy the item to relist for profit. That takes your low priced item off the mb and returns current prices to what they had been, usually before anyone other than the buyer has noticed.


I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

The last thing you want to do is give buyers such absolute control over the market prices because they're looking to pay as little as possible just as sellers are trying to sell for as much as possible. That's why the free market exists - so a price point can be reached that both sides are willing to accept as reasonable.

I've not seen a buy/sell system quite like the one Grizzly had mentioned, but I do like how it's handled in GW2. You can place a buy or sell order for whatever price you like, but no one is obligated or stuck just because someone low balled an item. You can still choose to sell at what price you like.

A visual:


So on that one, I guess if someone is feeling suuupuer charitable, they could actually sell that armor to the person requesting to buy it at 35 gold. Or they could insta-sell it to the top buy-request. OR list it at what they feel like and wait for someone to come along to buy it.

[Risvertasashi]

I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

Yeah you don't understand how it works at all.

Buy orders are not required to be filled. They're an option. No one would fill a stupidly low priced buy order, just like no one will buy a wind crystal priced at 999,999,999 gil.

Isnt undercutting part of balancing the economy? If someone puts up a ton of stuff way low for the amount of effort to make/get it then you can buy out all their stuff and make a major profit. Then eventually the market stabilises behind a price right?

Sure it'd be nice if everything stayed at a million gill sale wise, but as patches continue and people jump into the market supply goes up and demand goes down, natural for prices to tank.

Yes, but a surprising amount of people don't actually want a free market. They want SE to control it for them so they can have 500~800% markup guaranteed. They just try to find more sympathetic ways to phrase it than this.

[MilkieTea]

Yeah you don't understand how it works at all.

Buy orders are not required to be filled. They're an option. No one would fill a stupidly low priced buy order, just like no one will buy a wind crystal priced at 999,999,999 gil.

Please read what they are replying to.

Only one way to get a definite end to undercutting. Buy orders.

AKA: Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled.
That way it would be significantly harder for someone to crash the value of items by grossly undercutting them.

[Risvertasashi]

Please read what they are replying to.

I read it just fine - it seems you don't understand either.

So, let me explain.

Crystals are selling for 100 gil each. There is a buy order for crystals for 80 gil each.

Mr. Undercutter wants to sell his crystals for 50 gil each. But when he goes to list, instead of creating a listing of crystals for sale at 50 gil each, the buy orders for 80 gil each are automatically filled.

Creating a buy order for 1 gil each does nothing. If there's only buy orders for 1 gil, then Mr. Undercutter's crystals would be listed for 50 gil. (So it basically works exactly as now).

Really, I didn't think so many people could misunderstand what "below" means.

[MilkieTea]

I read it just fine - it seems you don't understand either.

So, let me explain.

Crystals are selling for 100 gil each. There is a buy order for crystals for 80 gil each.

Mr. Undercutter wants to sell his crystals for 50 gil each. But when he goes to list, instead of creating a listing of crystals for sale at 50 gil each, the buy orders for 80 gil each are automatically filled.

Creating a buy order for 1 gil each does nothing. If there's only buy orders for 1 gil, than Mr. Undercutter's crystals would be listed for 50 gil.

That's not what they're saying though. Reread it, carefully. The way they're phrasing things implies that the system is not opt in, but rather forced. I understand what you are saying.

If person "A" sells Crystals for 50 gil, let's call him Mr. Normal just because. If Mr. Normal puts up Crystals for 50 gil, he's golden. So far, he's not doing anything wrong if crystals are going for roughly 50 gil anyways. He's not affected by what comes next, since his were put up before.

Someone could, then, put up a buy order for 500 gil, and because no one can undercut him, someone could effectively control the market with one alt. The only effective way of doing such a system would make it so that the system is opt in, and not forced.

I don't like massive undercutters, but I also don't appreciate people effectively holding a market hostage to the highest bidder.

[Baingoleth]

Put things up with whatever price makes you happy, The market will correct. If an item is high demand, someone will buy everything up cheap and re-list higher anyway.

[kaynide]

Re: Buy orders and sell orders/How it works in GW2

Wind crystals are on sale:
1,000 at 75 gil
another 1,000 available at 100 gil
a final 5,000 at 500 gil

Bill makes a new sell order: 100 wind crystals at a price of 50 gil, currently making a new lowest price.

Ted puts in a buy order: 5,000 crystals at 50 gil.

Then, Don puts in a buy order: 5,000 wind crystals at a price of 200 gil.

What happens:

Bill’s 100 crystals sell first, at 50g each, to Ted.

Then Ted still has a remaining 4,900 crystals he wants to buy for 50g each but no one is selling at that price.

Don then gets all 1,000 at 75 gil, then 1,000 at 100 gil. He still needs 3,000 but no one is selling at 200 gil or less.

And then the market shows:

There are 5,000 available at 500 gil. (The current lowest “want to sell” ceiling)
There is a buy order that wants a further 3,000 crystals at 200 gil each. (The current highest “want to buy” floor)
Ted has to wait until Don gets all of his crystals, raise his buy price above 200 gil, or just buy the current available stock at 500 gil.

Current Wind Crystal Celing/Floor: 5,000@500g / 3,000@200g

Other random players who want to buy or sell quickly need to price somewhere between that ceiling/floor. Or match the current ceiling/floor as a kind of “buy/sell it now” option.

———

The only way to tank this is to be able to put in a massive buy or sell order that no one can compete with, in which case you will lose lots of money buying stock at overpriced value or by selling too cheap. Or alternatively controlling the supply (which is impossible in this game; there aren’t limited notorious monster drops/resource nodes/etc that players can monopolize)

As long as they sell for outrageous prices, people will be riding that gravy train. And as soon as they get too cheap to be worth the time, people stop farming them.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

but where and how does a item get it's value is there some sort of math involved because by the sounds of it anyone can just make a amount up that is the issue with player based economies anyone can just make something up. Though you hate being undercut but in a market it's fair game if you sold something for 100k and I sold it for 50k then customers would rather pay 50k then 100k realistically

[GrizzlyTank]

Price things the way you want. You decide the value of your time, not others.

If someone thinks you've listed it too low, they're welcome to buy the item to relist for profit. That takes your low priced item off the mb and returns current prices to what they had been, usually before anyone other than the buyer has noticed.


I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

The last thing you want to do is give buyers such absolute control over the market prices because they're looking to pay as little as possible just as sellers are trying to sell for as much as possible. That's why the free market exists - so a price point can be reached that both sides are willing to accept as reasonable.

Re-read what i wrote... "Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled."

If someone makes a buy order at 1gil, then someone can still sell their item at whatever gil they want as long as it is at or above 1 gil.
At the same time someone else can set a higher buy order meaning that, that order has to be fulfilled before yours.

Edit: Just saw that there were multiple people that... Somehow had no idea of what i wrote. Risvertasashi and Skivvy you got it right. I was mainly talking about how GW2 does it, although there it goes both ways. For buyer you have to either make a buy order for whatever gil, or buy the item listed for lowest sell order. Aka if an item is sold for 80, 90, 100 you can either set a buy order for <80 gil or you have to purchase the item for 80 gil, can't buy the items for 90 or 100 untill the 80 item is sold.

Same for a seller, if someone want to sell an item and there are buy orders for 10, 20 and 30 gil. then the seller can set whatever price they want as long as it is above 30gil, or sell directly to the buy order for 30 gil, but can't sell directly to the 20 and 10 buy orders.

I don't like massive undercutters, but I also don't appreciate people effectively holding a market hostage to the highest bidder.

Looking at GW2, the market there isn't held at hostage at all, rather the prices are stabilized for it's supply and demand. More supply than demand and prices drop, demand than supply the prices rise. It's just that no single person can just say this 1000gil item is now worth 200g and have other people unknowingly assisting keeping the price grossly deflated.