Please Undercut Wisely

[Lafiele]

Some people want to sell first. If everyone undercut like you guys did, the situations wouldn't change except for the fact that it would become an undercut war. Someone who undercuts big is telling you, go, I dare you, I dare you to undercut me more! So the smart thing to do here is, either wait it out or undercut him if you aren't patient enough.

Also low price high volume does work in ffxiv because those 40 slots yo u have will free up quicker than the 40 slots someone has at a 50 % marked up price.

[Radacci]

It's just my opinion, but selling these mats for absurd amounts of money, is like selling relic progression/Titan wins.
Do you level up DoW/M, to make money from people? probably not. Do you level up DoH/L to make money? apparently.
So why is it ok to sell food for 1-3k/piece, but not ok to sell Titan wins? Isn't your time as DoW/M worth any money? And why is your time as DoH/L so F***** precious, that you need to sell food/mats for 1-3k/piece?

[Lyrinn]

Hence why I said I don't advocate strictly doing one method or the other. If I have time, then of course I'll go farm the mats myself.

But the way things are on my server at least, I'm still selling faster than I can craft for half the day. Mats cost average 3k, items sell for 10k+. I'm not competing with other farmers for hours to make an extra 3k when my retainer is standing around with open slots.

Maybe one day, I'll go super tryhard and build a stochastic model just to see how much downtime for farming I have. Too much effort for a game though.

[OldGeezer]

Hence why I said I don't advocate strictly doing one method or the other. If I have time, then of course I'll go farm the mats myself.

But the way things are on my server at least, I'm still selling faster than I can craft for half the day. Mats cost average 3k, items sell for 10k+. I'm not competing with other farmers for hours to make an extra 3k when my retainer is standing around with open slots.

Maybe one day, I'll go super tryhard and build a stochastic model just to see how much downtime for farming I have. Too much effort for a game though.

Well a 70% margin is great. Level 40+ item, I take it. If you can still make 70% a few months from now I will be very impressed, because you're not making that on the middle-tier stuff unless you do it yourself.

[MomoOG]

The OP doesn't have a problem with undercutting. He has a problem with illogical undercutting. If an item is selling regularly for 2k (based on history) then the logical undercutter would only drop it to 1999 to go to the top of the list. The illogical undercutter drops the price to 1k. The only reason to drop the price by that much is if the item WAS NOT SELLING at the previous price. I see this happen all the time and it really is head scratching.

[rex1976]

The OP doesn't have a problem with undercutting. He has a problem with illogical undercutting. If an item is selling regularly for 2k (based on history) then the logical undercutter would only drop it to 1999 to go to the top of the list. The illogical undercutter drops the price to 1k. The only reason to drop the price by that much is if the item WAS NOT SELLING at the previous price. I see this happen all the time and it really is head scratching.

see above ^ when i am undercut on a flooded market logically (by 1 or 10 gils) i will undercut the market seemingly illogically. i do this because 1) you've made me mad, 2) because i am baiting the rest of the sellers into undercutting me again, and again. to the point where you are selling at a breakeven or below cost price. at wich point i will buy your items and pull all of mine from the market. then i wait a day or 2 and put the items back up after market corrected itself. stop scratching your head

[MomoOG]

see above ^ when i am undercut on a flooded market logically (by 1 or 10 gils) i will undercut the market seemingly illogically. i do this because 1) you've made me mad, 2) because i am baiting the rest of the sellers into undercutting me again, and again. to the point where you are selling at a breakeven or below cost price. at wich point i will buy your items and pull all of mine from the market. then i wait a day or 2 and put the items back up after market corrected itself. stop scratching your head

1) If you are undercutting because you are "mad" then you are undercutting based on emotion and not logic. Therefore it is not "seemingly illogical".
2) Your second point is banking on the assumption that the other people are going to get baited. This is of course at the risk of selling your own stuff cheap and the people who are trying to bait don't even get baited. Most people can do basic math and figure out where they break even you know?
No I think I'll still keep scratching my head thanks.

[Astarica]

It's pretty incredible that people can play MMORPG without realizing the price of goods always tend to crash with few rare exceptions (usually involve stuff that are dropped).

The bulk of your profit is made from other crafters, which makes the whole thing a Ponzi scam. Ponzi scams are not sustainable, and add to the fact that most MMORPG decline on a server level after launch, the pool of suckers to make your money from is ever decreasing, so you have to be very aggressive. If you're playing on say WoW when it was new, you could afford to be less aggressive because the game was clearly growing so you figure there will always be new suckers to buy your stuff, but you can't do that here.

Right now the only reason why people can even make some money off market board is that because gil is useless, guys who can destroy your profit have no particular reason to do so. I can sell something that goes for 5000 on market board for 500 gil and still turn a profit (as a note, 1 star items have very low time-to-gather due to level 50 nodes yield multiple per gather). I don't do that because I have no reason to need more gil so the only reason I'd do it is to see you suffer, and I am not that bored. If there was a legitmate use for gil, then someone will take 500 gil over nothing and the items will crash spectcularly.

[Mitski]

The bulk of your profit is made from other crafters, which makes the whole thing a Ponzi scam. Ponzi scams are not sustainable, and add to the fact that most MMORPG decline on a server level after launch, the pool of suckers to make your money from is ever decreasing, so you have to be very aggressive. If you're playing on say WoW when it was new, you could afford to be less aggressive because the game was clearly growing so you figure there will always be new suckers to buy your stuff, but you can't do that here.

The second person in this thread to misuse this term Ponzi Scheme.

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from existing capital or new capital paid by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation."

Personal sales you make in FFXIV are not a ponzi scheme.
-There are no investors
-Real profits are earned

I'm sick of people using (or attempting to use) terms they don't understand to sound impressive.

[Astarica]

I'm sick of people using (or attempting to use) terms they don't understand to sound impressive.

So you're tired of hearing yourself?

An item like Twinthread is produced by a crafter that can only be sold to another crafter. While in theory the buyer of the Twinthread can turn it to say, Militia Robe, this is overlooking the fact that whoever made the original Twinthread most definitely can make Militia Robe as well. The reason the seller of the Twinthread did not turn this into a Militia Robe is because he already figured out there isn't a market for the finished goods, so instead he sells it to other crafters, making the whole thing a Ponzi scam. Even raw materials like Cobalt Ore is almost certainly from one crafter to another, given DoL jobs are generally harder to level than DoH jobs. Crystal shards are almost certainly mined by someone who have crafting skills at some point (unless that person realized from the get go that leveling up crafting is clueless), and is of course is only useful to another crafter.

While the market for finished goods is not a Ponzi scam, this is also rather limited. For example the high 40s jewelry sells at a decent price, but my server's log reveals 10 of those has been sold per day, and there isn't exactly a significant barrier of entry to make such things. Even here, most of those sales are likely to be used in spiritbonding, which is one of the few recurring consumable goods in this game. I can sell an Aethernyte Ring at 500 gil and turn a profit, though at that price I might be better off selling Gold Ore or Rose Gold Nugget instead, which again goes back to the Ponzi scam.