Please Squeenix, implement blind bids on the markets...

[Cairdeas]

And is that 50% undercut the minimum price you would want for the item? Also why would you drop it by 50% when you could often achieve better results by trying 85% first? While you may see it as worthwhile, you also give yourself no wiggle room to account for people that further undercut you. Stores do the same thing, it is actually rather rare that they are not making a profit off of even their sale items, and when they do loose profit on an item on sale, they are trying to get you into their store to buy more than just that one item. When was the last time you found drastic price differences on an item for sale by businesses in the real world outside of sales?

Time lost waiting for an item to sell at a higher price is TIME LOST.

[Hawklaser]

Time lost waiting for an item to sell at a higher price is TIME LOST.

Time is valuable, but you are not really loosing time when listing something closer to its current value unless of course you are trying to move a ridiculous amount of item in say 5 hours. Also by drastically dropping the price of an item you are devaluing not only the item, but also the time needed to make or obtain said item. So really if you are loosing time waiting on an item to sell, you must not be doing anything else in that period either.

might have... seriously, this is why contractions should be banned.

anyhoo... if someone is willing to farm or craft an item day in and day out and sell it for 10K, then that is their decision. As long as someone is willing to provide the market with that product for 10K, any asking price that is higher is going to be rejected by the consumers until the supplier is no longer able to meet the demand.

I'll go fix that just for you.

Yeah it is their decision to do so, but more often than not, a decision made in haste is a poor one. And the main reason most undercut is due to being impatient and wanting their gil an hour in the past. The problem with most massive undercutting is that it will often snowball because most people don't consider a larger period of time, as it can easily make what was just undercut on worthless for a prolonged period of time. Now if you are trying to drive out your competition for a market, that is a totally different ball of wax.

[zenmetsu]

Yeah it is their decision to do so, but more often than not, a decision made in haste is a poor one. And the main reason most undercut is due to being impatient and wanting their gil an hour in the past. The problem with most massive undercutting is that it will often snowball because most people don't consider a larger period of time, as it can easily make what was just undercut on worthless for a prolonged period of time. Now if you are trying to drive out your competition for a market, that is a totally different ball of wax.

The only decisions made in haste are people that just blindly charge the same rate as everyone else. Oh wait, undercutting by 1gil is OK, I forgot. Oh wait, someone else came along and undercut by another 1gil... then another... and another... SHIT, now the market price is 5 gil less than what you originally listed it for, better go re-list it. 2 hours have passed, you go to check the market, the price is 10gil lower now because of people dropping the price by 1gil at a time. Hmm... see a trend? THE PRICE IS TOO DAMNED HIGH.

You aren't getting it. If people are trying to sell an item for 20k gil, and I can be happy with 10k, why would I sell it for 20k? We only have 20 slots on our retainers after all. So while you are trying to sell 5-6 items for 20k gil, i'm selling 20 of them 10k each. By time my stuff sells, i've made/gathered more and replenish my retainer with new stock. Fast forward 5 hours, I've emptied my retainer 3 times, sold 60*20k = 1,200k gil, and you've sold zero. I go off and do something else or log out, the price creeps back up in the absence of my supply and maybe, just maybe, you manage to sell a few before I log in and start at it again.

I *have* driven you, the competition, out of the market. You refuse to lower your price because selling for my price is "not worth it" in your eyes. In actuality, trying to sell for "your price" is what is "not worth it".

34,817,220... it represents an amount of something that I have, that you likely would love to have. If the corresponding number for your character is greater than this, then congratulations. If it is lower than this, then you probably should not be telling me about economics within this game. I went there... at great peril of looking like a douche, but sometimes people need a reality check.

[Hawklaser]

The only decisions made in haste are people that just blindly charge the same rate as everyone else. Oh wait, undercutting by 1gil is OK, I forgot. Oh wait, someone else came along and undercut by another 1gil... then another... and another... SHIT, now the market price is 5 gil less than what you originally listed it for, better go re-list it. 2 hours have passed, you go to check the market, the price is 10gil lower now because of people dropping the price by 1gil at a time. Hmm... see a trend? THE PRICE IS TOO DAMNED HIGH.

You aren't getting it. If people are trying to sell an item for 20k gil, and I can be happy with 10k, why would I sell it for 20k? We only have 20 slots on our retainers after all. So while you are trying to sell 5-6 items for 20k gil, i'm selling 20 of them 10k each. By time my stuff sells, i've made/gathered more and replenish my retainer with new stock. Fast forward 5 hours, I've emptied my retainer 3 times, sold 60*20k = 1,200k gil, and you've sold zero. I go off and do something else or log out, the price creeps back up in the absence of my supply and maybe, just maybe, you manage to sell a few before I log in and start at it again.

I *have* driven you, the competition, out of the market. You refuse to lower your price because selling for my price is "not worth it" in your eyes. In actuality, trying to sell for "your price" is what is "not worth it".

34,817,220... it represents an amount of something that I have, that you likely would love to have. If the corresponding number for your character is greater than this, then congratulations. If it is lower than this, then you probably should not be telling me about economics within this game. I went there... at great peril of looking like a douche, but sometimes people need a reality check.

First off, 35 million gil on a Legacy server is no impressive feat, considering plenty of people on Legacy servers started out XIV:ARR with 10M in gil not to mention other items. Second off, it does not take a large amount of gil to get how economics works, more often than not instead of making a massive bankroll of gil, I get what I need then continue doing other things.

Only time I would complain about an item being dropped by 1 gil increments is if said item was only worth 10-20gil to begin with, and at that point may as well just start vendoring it unless selling 40 stacks in the time it takes to get 40 more. People have not driven me out of the markets I choose to participate in, I actually do very well in the markets I am in, I just know better than to screw up an off market I may need to return to in the future. I take a very patient approach to getting to the correct market price as there is no way to know that without participating in the market for a while. If an item is not selling, I will adjust the price down provided the market is not currently being crashed, and if I can't keep them in stock I adjust upwards slowly. There is usually very little reason to drop a price of something by over 50% unless it has not sold in over a week or two outside of impatience.

I also don't blindly charge the same as other people, I use the market history a lot. It's actually how I make most of the gil I do when I need it. After all I'd rather waste a little time learning a market then blindly picking what to sell.

As to you being happy selling at half price, you could likely have even more gil if you would have sold closer to what the market price was. I would not be surprised if most of the people buying your half price stuff is turning around and reselling it, all you did was save them time unless you flood the market to the point your price sticks.

Ding! You are unwilling to do the work that I will do for the pay that I am willing to accept. As long as you are still trying to sell the same product as I, you are a threat. You will either undercut me, or list at the same price and possibly take my sales. In the case of crafting, you will be buying up the materials that I need, and thus, increasing the cost of those materials. In the case of mob drops, like fleece/hides/meat you are competing for kills. It isn't always about undercutting.

It is actually really easy to spot attempts like that, and those I don't mind. As have a few spots planning to do that soon as the free transfers are over. I actually do a lot of things much cheaper than MB, but I don't use the MB for those in the interest of preserving multiple sources of income.

[zenmetsu]

First off, 35 million gil on a Legacy server is no impressive feat, considering plenty of people on Legacy servers started out XIV:ARR with 10M in gil not to mention other items. Second off, it does not take a large amount of gil to get how economics works, more often than not instead of making a massive bankroll of gil, I get what I need then continue doing other things.

Perhaps, but I didn't play very much of v1.0, just had my subscription running to get legacy status. I started ARR with 70k gil. The fact that I have made as much as I have is an indicator that I am doing something right. The fact that my practices drive you so nutzoid is a good indicator that people who do the same are robbing you of business, and in the real world, that is how you make money.

[Hawklaser]

Perhaps, but I didn't play very much of v1.0, just had my subscription running to get legacy status. I started ARR with 70k gil. The fact that I have made as much as I have is an indicator that I am doing something right. The fact that my practices drive you so nutzoid is a good indicator that people who do the same are robbing you of business, and in the real world, that is how you make money.

Still not impressed by gil on a legacy server.There is so much of it floating around on those servers, prices of things are likely either very inflated so your gil does not go nearly as far or very deflated so that it does not matter one bit. Out of curiosity, what is your servers average shard cost for comparison? Tends to be 30-50gil per one on my server. Shards seem to be one of the most stable markets overall on a server, so should be a good comparison of gil value across servers.

Your practices don't drive me nuts, as I can see yours are to control a market. As you are not going to blindly crash a market just because you want your item gone, which means if I wanted to I could start to sell in the same market without too much worry about the item being devalued to nothing in a couple of hours, and I could also happily watch you destroy your own market just in an attempt to keep me out of it. The problem of undercutters is not the same as that, they don't care about keeping a market viable, they just want the gil 2 hours before they list the item. The problem is there are so many of them just trying to make a quick buck that it can destabilize a market when they flood it. You can watch this happen just about every time a new miner or botanist hits a market and tries to unload all the stuff they get while leveling.

[roohan]

In my opinion the market won't work in the long run as it stands now. The markets is flooded by materials and the supply is too high compared to the demand. Just yesterday I was mining iron ore for my blacksmith and another 6! Miners were doing the same. Now I got 300 iron ores and about 30 HQ ores. Multiply this by the other miners and your at 1800 iron ores. I got 10 levels as blacksmith from these ores and still have about 100 ores left over. This means that about 9 blacksmiths can level from 15 to 25 from those six miners and their ore. Now taking into account that I didn't mine for leveling it gets even worse. Because miners gather even more than just 300 ores when they want to level on these.

As a crafter the same thing happens. You craft a ton iron Ingots noone really needs. You end up with like 1 stack of iron ore but on the markets are already several stacks listed, since you're not the only blacksmith grinding on iron ingots. The end of the story is that people start to undercut, because the supply is so damn high. There is still valuable stuff on the markets, but running through the town tells me that it's getting more problematic. In every corner sits a crafter who's going to hit level 50 fast I never so many people crafting in FFXI for example.

Even HQ items will drop in value pretty soon. I have carpenter and weaver at level 50 now. And with my cross class skill and HQ gear I can almost HQ everytime without using HQ base materials. This means more and more people will get two crafts at 50 as time goes by. This is especially bad because as miner or botanist I can't HQ at the rate my blacksmith can.

Even high level items will,drop because one crafter after the gets level 50 in no time.