OK, I gotta vent. Are people stupid or... Stupid?

[Lux_Rayna]

the issue goes deeper then that

why bother ever doing anything but selling raw materials if you want to make money at all, ever?

why is it that ore sells for 3k each
the ingot sells for 3k(but cost 3 ore to make)
and the item that you make with said ingot also cost 3k(even though it took alot more then the ingot to make it)

Its "demand". Think about everything you can use ore for:

1) To skill up a craft
2) to make mats which can be used to craft items

Finished products are just that, finished products..they have no use outside of their stats and MAYBE for a spiritbond. But again, those products can be made by buying ore. Ore is just infinitely more useful and versatile, thus has a greater demand, thus has a greater price. Its not so much stupidity as it is natural economics at work.

Crafters undercut because they can. Its not dumb, if they gathered all of their mats then every gil they make off of their products is pure profit. If you sell something at 180k to make a 20k profit, and I sell the same item for 80k, who wins? I gathered all my mats, thats 80k at pure profit. You bought your mats, and can only squeeze 20k profit. Even tho I sold at a much lower price, a "stupid" price, I made 4 times the amount you did...and probably sold out while yours is still sitting in the market. Nothing dumb about it, its just business.

There's a difference between smart, and dumb competition though. All they do is ruin revenue for themselves, and for others as well by destroying the market price when they undercut by 75%. Generally some other idiot will undercut them back by a huge margin.

See above. They dont ruin revenue, they are making way more revenue than everyone else selling at higher prices. Undercutting is only stupid if you can't afford to do it. But if you gathered all the mats, you can sell at whatever price you want and get a way better profit then ppl who didnt. Thats why everyone says level a DOL. Having a DOL lets you compete with ppl that have one. You will lose every time to someone with a DOL because they can go much lower than you and can still make way more money than you do. Not having a DOL is like showing up with a knife at a gun fight. You're stabbing yourself in the foot, walking in handicapped, and then say its stupid because "real men fight up close"

[TheVedis]

Crafters undercut because they can. Its not dumb, if they gathered all of their mats then every gil they make off of their products is pure profit. If you sell something at 180k to make a 20k profit, and I sell the same item for 80k, who wins? I gathered all my mats, thats 80k at pure profit. You bought your mats, and can only squeeze 20k profit. Even tho I sold at a much lower price, a "stupid" price, I made 4 times the amount you did...and probably sold out while yours is still sitting in the market. Nothing dumb about it, its just business.

you need to redo your math

if i sell something for 180k, and thats 20k profit
and you sell the item for 80, after gathering all the mats, you just lost out on money, not gained in the longrun

you coulda sold the materials you farmed for 160k, but instead oyu chose to make an item for 80k.....THAT is where the problem lies

Supply and demand was never the issue, its people undercutting for the sake of undercutting and doing absolutely no research on the market

if 100 of an item sell per day, and 100 of it are made, the items should all sell regardless of the need to undercut each other, but people dont look tgar far, they see 90 items up for sale, they dont look at the price history, they dont look at the fact those other 90 items are from 50 different sellers all asking the same price, they go in, and put it up for half the cost just so they sell theres before the other sellers, even though it woulda sold at full price, justs o they can sell it an hour quicker then others did
and what happens then is everyone sees the price history and that someones selling that low, so then sales stop and people wait for that lower price to show again, and it forces everyone else to go lower in price too even though the item was more then selling at the higher price


its stupidity, it has nothing to do with supply and demand, people who are apperently allergic to making money

[Lux_Rayna]

you need to redo your math

if i sell something for 180k, and thats 20k profit
and you sell the item for 80, after gathering all the mats, you just lost out on money, not gained in the longrun

you coulda sold the materials you farmed for 160k, but instead oyu chose to make an item for 80k.....THAT is where the problem lies

Time is money...as I said I sold mine a lot faster than yours. I can probably mine an entire stack and put it up on the MW by the time yours sells. Depends on how liquid the market is. Say what you want but its not "stupid". Profit is profit, money is money, it doesn't matter if its 500gil or 300k. If I can sell something faster than you, and make more of a profit than you..I will do it, especially in an illiquid market. While you wait all night for one item to sell for 20k profit, i can mine the mats and put 5 up on the market at a lower price before yours ever sells. Is it stupid? Nope...its pure profit either way. And you're only making 160k if it actually sells. Try beating someone who can put 3 up at 90k and not take a loss at all.

Undercutting is only competition until no one is making a profit at all. Lol

Lol someone is always making money. A crafter can buy that silver dirt cheap and sell the finished products for increased profit margins. Not as great as having a dol yourself, but you save a LOT of time. And as they say, time is money, especially when the markets are cheap.

Let's say im a crafter, and I need to skill up off of cobalt ore. I look in the markets and its way too expensive. Thats fine, I have a DOL so i can mine it up. Do I really wanna do that all the time though? Naw. Better idea. I"ll mine 3 stacks and cut the price of cobalt in half. Thats right..half. Lucky for me cobalt isnt a highly liquid market anymore, it used fly off the shelves like candy but electrum is the *hot* item right now. Great...with those 3 stacks up at 50% discount, all I need to do is wait for someone to undercut me. No one is gonna want to wait for 3 stacks to sell, and a miner gets pure profit no matter what he sells it for. Oh look, someone undercut me..welcome to the temporary new price of cobalt at 50% off.

Now I can buy it and sell all of my finished products for the normal price of ingots and probably make a good fat 50% profit in doing so. Welcome to business 101. Undercutting will always make someone money if they're wise enough.

[Peptaru]

Rayna is part of why economies in games are broken, she refuses to see the other side. "Screwin myself outta millions is np, i still make profit!" Jihadists also think they're not mistaken. EXTREME EXAMPLES FTW!

[indira]

if theres a history of sales your getting under cut lower items sell first and market gets locked near the low.

one reason people didnt want a AH but now we have a 90% AH. back before we had the sell history we could make our own price.

[Phrozen]

i'm stupid

[Moonbringer]

Yeah think you should have a DOL levelled which matches your DOH. i have never bought mats because of what u have said here. if you had miner levelled you still would have made 180k and not spent anything but a few shards or crystals.

[Lux_Rayna]

Rayna is part of why economies in games are broken, she refuses to see the other side. "Screwin myself outta millions is np, i still make profit!" Jihadists also think they're not mistaken. EXTREME EXAMPLES FTW!

I'm not, I dont even operate that way. (EDIT: well I would but im busy grinding for now) But I understand business, something ppl *fail* to understand. Thats how real businesses work; try telling the owner of Wal-Mart that he's screwing himself out of millions by having the lowest prices on everything. Wal-Mart has things up to like 40-50% off the retail price. Thats how the real world works.

Its not about *right* or *wrong* when it comes to business. There is no "right" way to undercut...unless you're losing money or something. Problem is ppl treat the markets like we're all supposed to be doing each other favors so we all make money. Its not a team sport lol. Making gil is a solo activity, I shouldnt have to play undercut footsies a few gil at a time with you in a battle of "who checks the MW most often" when I can just go straight to a price you can't go to and win. Its not a line where the first person to put it up should sell first, and everyone else should just wait. I don't get your mentality.

The only who gets screwed is the person who got undercut. The undercutter isnt screwing himself at all. Ppl are just butthurt they got undercut so they act like the guy that did it is an idiot. I understand cuz i complain about it too. But I recognize its not stupid, its business. If you don't like it stay out of the markets lol.


EDIT: Something everyone also fails to see is that undercutting makes buyers very happy.

[Peptaru]

Rayna, Walmart could sell a dozen eggs for $.69 instead of $1.19... why don't they? They don't need to. They're still the cheapest around and they aren't costing themselves millions. The example you made totally made MY point. Thanks! ^^

[HiirNoivl]

The only thing I find stupid is when material prices are so undercut that it's actually not profitable to put them in the wards.

Silver or on Gysahl got as low as 120 gil per ore. That's less than 12k for a stack of silver considering the tax for putting it in the wards.

If it were to drop any lower one would either have to wait for the market to completely crash or just NPC/use the silver.

Undercutting is only competition until no one is making a profit at all. Lol

I love it when people undercut below the NPC buy-back price. Derp. Thanks for paying me to buy your stuff.