Overflowing stupidity

[Little_Ifrit]

I'll undercut during the levelling process. Not to such an extent that I'd get less money than an npc would pay me for the item. But if it means getting it out of my inventory then I'm good to sell it for cheap. Ideally I'll make a profit, but some people are just greedy. They want massive amounts of gil for something easily crafted. Nope. If its easy to craft then everyone will do it and the price will be shit.

[Wulfies]

The ability to see how much items are listed for is killing crafting. In FFXI you bid based on past sells, here every idiot undercuts every item that has any volume of sales until they are losing money on each synth. I ask why?

Hi,

I think the way the system is currently designed allows for more transparency within the economy and that is a good thing. You are going to have under-cutters in this system but you will have them in your bid system in FFXI as well. To demonstrate, lets use the following example (please note the numbers are exaggerated to show variance but the concepts behind still remain). Since we are using FFXI as an example, I'll use an item from that game (Krakken Club). Lets have 4 sellers named Larry, Curly, Mo, and Fred (Fred will play the part of the evil under-cutter). Based on the system can see that the Krakken Club is being sold for at a consistent basis of say 1mm gil the last 8 times. So, lets remove the "veil" and show the prices of our four sellers:

Larry - 1,000,000.00
Curly - 1,010,000.00
Mo - 995,000.00
Fred - 600,000.00

Now, I was going to buy a Krakken Club. I won't assume that the going rate is 1mm (maybe it is just me, but I will put in a bid at 500k, i will not "win" so I will up the bid to 650k. Now, lo-and-behold, I just won a Krakken Club for 650k (I am happy and I go about my merry way telling my friends to search and try to bid in that price range). Word will spread to Larry, Curly, and Mo and they will panic and reduce their price because they want their Krakken Club to sell.

Now, Fred has jsut de-valued the Krakken Club by 35%. By making the market system a blind bidding you really have not reduced the undercutting. That will always be there regardless of what you try.

This rampant undercutting is just a SYMPTOM of the underlying problem which is the rampant botting (both mob bots like the ones that farm fleece and Diremite Webs and the mining/logging bots). This is the real problem and until this is resolved the market is FUBAR'd.

There are things that have never made sense to me like this: peacock ore selling for 25k each, you need 9 for an ingot as well as a rose gold nugget. Now the nugget is going to cost you about 2k with all nq mats(gold ore was about 400-500 each) so we're at about 227k for this rose gold ingot in cost, nq sells for 200k hq for 250k. I love the logic that on an nq you deserve to lose money and on hq you deserve roughly 10% profit. The market is broken, I was making base relics and we were all doing well at about 20k-30k profit with materia melded in an hq, now we lose money or break even because about 2 people keep it crashed. Nobody cares that the leather workers are charging 100k for that base relic.

Crafters should be able to make 10% on nq's and 25% on harder hq's. You gotta pay to be lazy.

Here I think you are making one huge assumption. The assumption is that you are buying everything from the market boards. For me at least I run out and gather/kill most of the raw mats. So all that is lost for me is the time spent doing this process. To which, if I feel my time that I took to gather these mats is worth 200k, who is to question that?

An example, I tried to make a Weaver AF cap fr the first time (I failed because I didn't realize I needed more durability than I had for careful synthts, so that's all my fault). I went out and farmed the fleece for the woolen cloth, harvested the Crawler Cocoons for the Twinthread, and Logged the trees for my Chocobo Feather. Now if I had succeeded, I can/will sell that for what ever I feel and if I am strapped for cash, i will "fire sale" that crap stuff off.

[JeniLinsky]

The other thing is, you can wait the market out. I sell a lot of dye. I have a set price for the dye, and I put it up at that price all the time. Eventually, it sells, because it's a commodity people want, and there are times when my price is the lowest on the board, even though it's not the lowest when I put it up. If you really feel that your three-handled family gradunza is worth a million gil per handle, even though it's only selling for 20 gil per handle, put it up at that price and see... it may be that someone is desperate for a gradunza at the time they're looking, and yours is the only one on the board.

Or it may not.

[Leon_Stormrage]

Snip Snip

If you farmed the items all is profit because you didn't buy anything to make this item. Yes I know there is the time factor but you can sold 3 hours at the price that you want.
And BTW I don't know in your servers but in mine the philo items are around 18-20k

[Makado]

If you want to make money crafting, just just make items people use for triple turn in levequest (HQ of course). I see hardly any of these selling for bad prices, and if you want a quicker turn around shout and make them for people right on the spot leveling a craft, have them pay for the mats you just make the items and charge a little less then board prices.

[Brises]

The problem with the crafting market is there is no true overhead. In real life, manufacturing businesses have huge costs to produce their products, then they price their products to be competitive with other manufacturers while maintaining at least some profit margin. And a 5% profit over cost is usually doing pretty well. But no smart business is going to price their products at a loss, so undercutting is used in limitation.

In this game, if a person chooses to level several gathering/crafting classes, they can make anything for practically no cost to them. So they can take an item that would normally be priced at $2000 gil and sell it for $25, because it didn't even cost them that much to make. That's what I see as being the problem.

BTW, there can be no blind market, because everyone has access to the marked board to make purchases, and then people can see what others are pricing. It may be a little more work than having the prices right in your retainer, but determined sellers will do it.

[Leon_Stormrage]

In this game, if a person chooses to level several gathering/crafting classes, they can make anything for practically no cost to them. So they can take an item that would normally be priced at $2000 gil and sell it for $25, because it didn't even cost them that much to make. That's what I see as being the problem.

This is not a problem at all... if that person has the tools to gather all the ingredients and make the item. And after that he evaluate that the price is 25 and not 2000... Well I think that is pretty clear that is the real value of that item because all the 25 Gil are profits.

[Brises]

This is not a problem at all... if that person has the tools to gather all the ingredients and make the item. And after that he evaluate that the price is 25 and not 2000... Well I think that is pretty clear that is the real value of that item because all the 25 Gil are profits.

But that would harm the market, because if the overall economy settled on prices that low, there would be no reason to sell anything. I can make far more gil just doing tradeleves. People would be crafting only gear they need for their own classes and friends.

[Leon_Stormrage]

But that would harm the market, because if the overall economy settled on prices that low, there would be no reason to sell anything. I can make far more gil just doing tradeleves. People would be crafting only gear they need for their own classes and friends.

No one is going to sell his time for not profit, but if you have all the tools to craft something free, you can sell it at the price that you want, or that you think that is profitable for the time wasted on it. So it is not a problem, the problem are the farming bots...

[Xystic]

Removing listing prices and history of sales would be more akin to a actual auction IMO.

Its a market board, not an auction. I'm selling this item at "X" price.

Its not like an actual auction,where you expect your sales based on how much people are willing to bid before "Y" time expires.

A lot of people get confused about the auction house when in truth it is just a market board. FF14 ARR has called it the correct thing. It is just a market board, not an Auction. WoW calls it a AH but in truth, its just a market board as well.