Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
Undercutting is caused and encouraged by basic economic rules and human greed, not the method by which players trade items between themselves. Undercutting was just as rampant in FFXI, you just didn't notice it because FFXI let you pay 70,000 gil for an item that was listed at 69,995 gil.
That's not the point though. Yes, people are undercutting for 69,995 gil yet it shows up for 70,000 so the other sellers don't notice. However the one selling for 69,995 gil doesn't know if someone else is undercutting him. However the lowest price would be really hard to find. I know it's impossible to cut off undercutting, however it is definitely possible to hinder it.

It's not really the problem of who sells their item faster, but more towards the fact that the value of the item is decreased. Take boar leather +1 for example. On my server it can easily sell for 60k each when there is one or two competitors. However, when other sellers see the price they begin to join the market, but in order to take advantage of the current price, they undercut so that theirs will sell the fastest. This in the end triggers a chain reaction, causing boar leather to go down to as low as 30k each in just a single day. That's a 50% price drop. Though you can still see that the demand of the item is high because even if it is a 60k or 30k, the boar leather still sells at an accelerated pace. Now what happens if you add the bidding system? Yes the undercut race will still happen, but the profit made from the item is not as affected as it was before.

I guess a better way of stating it is that it will still let undercutting happen, but the value of the item doesn't decrease as suddenly as it currently does.