Please Undercut Wisely

[Mitski]

*SNIP*

Selling responsibly yields more money with less effort for you too.

...I can almost guaranteed you that your entire server won't sell 100K worth of Darksteel Ore in a given day. The amount of money you got to spend to keep the prices stable is almost certainly more than the entire revenue of the said item in a given day.

I buy 100k in Darksteel Ore at least 1 day a week for personal use. o.O

[Astarica]

Here's an illustration of why attempting to rein in undercutting cannot work even if you have the cooperation of an entire server of sellers. Let's say hypothetically Darksteel Ore is 500gil on your server. A guy decided to go rogue and dumps 250 ores at 400 gil each, which can be mined in one day but certainly takes no more than 2 days to go at 25 Darksteel Ore per node. So in order to stop this guy you have to buy all his ores first, at 250X400 = 100K. Now that amount isn't an outrageous amount of money, so you certainly can come up with that kind of money with the cooperation of the server's sellers.

But have you ever looked at how much Darksteel Ores sells in a day? I can almost guaranteed you that your entire server won't sell 100K worth of Darksteel Ore in a given day. The amount of money you got to spend to keep the prices stable is almost certainly more than the entire revenue of the said item in a given day.

[Borfin]

This is why I don't bother with the market and just sell crap for whatever it'll sell for.

[CalvatE]

This is why I don't bother with the market and just sell crap for whatever it'll sell for.

Amen to that.


I don't know squat about economics, besides things in demand sell higher, things in don't sell cheaply.
But when I see people beginning to cut each other 5 at a time in the market, I question how much of an affect that'll have.
Usually I under cut by 1 gil, and sometimes I just match the lowest price. But then when I look at the current board and you see about 6 separate 5 gil cuts, I question if I should buy the lowest and sell to match near higher so that the market doesn't crash.

Sadly though, this would be a risk since I imagine if I did this, some person comes by, sees my prices and then just under cuts again - the supply comes in faster than the people buy, making it so the item I just bought never sells for the intended, higher price.

Is this what people mean by the risk involved when in economics? I've heard of people in games playing the Auction Houses before and making plenty but I'm just a common peasant who doesn't know any better. I go out, gather materials, come back and sell them for the lowest price to ensure that they actually sell.
If something takes an hour to get a stack of and only sells for 2k gil, at this current economy I wouldn't bother at all.

[Ed_N_Ants]

People whine about people undercutting them and killing the market, but yet they admit that they troll the board and undercut the undercutters... Your killing your own profit... Put something up for sale and then leave it there... If its a reasonable price people will buy it... Everyone expects to put something on the board and have their money back in an hour... I put stuff up and it usually sells in a few days... My prices are reasonable not undercuts...

[Lyrinn]

People whine about people undercutting them and killing the market, but yet they admit that they troll the board and undercut the undercutters... Your killing your own profit... Put something up for sale and then leave it there... If its a reasonable price people will buy it... Everyone expects to put something on the board and have their money back in an hour... I put stuff up and it usually sells in a few days... My prices are reasonable not undercuts...

I undercut the undercutters and still make X00k daily. It's just a matter of playing the leapfrog game correctly. If two people are sitting there leapfrogging in 5 minute intervals back-to-back, then of course nothing good will come out of it.

[Astarica]

I keep on see people say 'my mats cost X gil'. No that's not what your mats cost. What you mean is "I saw the lowest Water Cluster on sale for X gil", and good luck trying to sell another one at that price. Besides, no one actually cares what your mats cost. I once made the mistake of making some Pineapple Juices. Nobody cares for the fact that it uses 1 Fire + 1 Water Cluster for something that's strictly worse than Mulled Tea. I had two choices at that point:

1. Hope someone dumb eventually comes around and buys them.
2. Sell them really cheap and cut my losses.

I ended up going with #2, though I managed to sell the Pineapple Juices at a price slightly above Mulled Tea, but I was certainly willing to go below that if needed.

[Umero]

If there's a surplus, the price will go down.
If there's a shortage, the price will go up.
It's as simple as that.

[DenzelTaru]

some people really misinterpreted my OP and or forum title.. some that are replying to me or the topic sound like they didnt even read what i said

i didnt write this to moan about undercutting..

i simply wanted to say.. if you are undercut.. undercut at a sensible rate.. don't drag an item through the dirt, cos people go off the current selling price that they see.. so it doesnt matter if it usually sells at 1000g for instance, if you undercut to 500gil everyone will start undercutting you.. and then another you will come along and drop it even further.;.

yes economy blah blah.. but we are in charge of this economy..

[SarcasmMisser]

yes economy blah blah.. but we are in charge of this economy..

No one is in charge it is an organic thing.

Also i will address your point because you assume pricing trends should happen with the long-term health of prices in mind. It was addressed in another thread but you can't use these assumptions because almost all of the market is a pyramid scheme, with the only market for most products being other crafters and therefore other sellers. Almost everyone is in it to make money so the overall effect is deflationary and people hoard money over reinvesting it (spending), as they know due to the increasing oversupply of sellers things will constantly get cheaper until there is no margin. It is basically a run on the banks and the gigantic undercuts are due to zero confidence in the sustainability of any high margin, any attempt to artificially control prices becomes less effective over time as cartels cannot exist in perfect competition.

This is actually a good economics lesson as to why (moderated) inflation is a good thing, as without inflation there is little encouragement for investment.