Please Undercut Wisely

[Elphan]

You're welcome OP.

[ApolloGenX]

You're welcome OP.

Exactly, and for most things in this game- supply is infinite. People don't want to admit they are selling trash...especially when they are trying to sell it at high prices.

[Astarica]

Not only is supply effectively infinite, but the demand curve is constantly being moved to the left because there are very few worthwhile consumable items and finished product do not spontaneously break down, unlike real life. For example, if you just hit level 50 and someone offered you a Militia Hat for vendor cost (~100 gil), you'd take it. But after you have something from AK or DL hat, you most likely won't take it for vendor cost because it's taking up a valuable spot in your armory space, unless you're trying to SB stuff. You literally can't give away most low level gear just because the guys who need it can't even be bothered to look it up.

[Inquisitor]

Not only is supply effectively infinite,<snip>.

The supply of materials is indeed effectively infinite, but so is the supply of gil.

The economy of FF14 is never going to really stabilize as long as there are armies of bots making the market price of some items (shards being the most obvious) lower than they would be if they were only being gained legitimately.

[Astarica]

People keep on say 'market value', but they don't get that your items are not worth the market value. Let's say the lowest fleece for sale is 300 gil. A guy decided to quit the game and hand you the 1000 fleece he's been hoarding. I guess some people will think you can immediately sell 299X1000 on the market for 299K. Well, all I can say is good luck if you actually believed in that. You might be able to sell close to 299K if you had a very long time to sell them, like say a month. If you wanted to sell this in a hurry, you got to make a rather drastic cut, and the fact that you're unloading 1000 Fleece is likely to cause some kind of mass panic when other people see 1000 fleece for sale at a low price (say, 250) which further destroys the value of your items.

If you really believe your mats are that valuable when computing the price of the finished good, you should be selling your mats instead. This also ignores the fact that in a MMORPG, the finished product generally loses value compared to the original materials, because once a shard has been turned into some finished product, it can no longer be turned into anything else. You have far better flexibility holding onto a thousand shards and some basic stuff like ores, than keeping a supply of ingots/rings/plates/rivets let alone the finished product.

[Terius]

Please keep undercutting. Such good bargains.

What? Your crafter can't sit in a pile of gil and do nothing all day?

[indira]

all people have to do is undercut one gil to get to the top of the list. not undercut to 10% of its price, im pretty sure people botting are just throwing away stuff like that..

[Zeronic]

Once again I will say that I hate undercuttings. I have tried a couple of things to counter this but to no avail. The are a couple of reason a free market doesn't work.
- You don't make wares to make a living. Lets say this were a game like sword art online where you literally live in the world. If you don't make enough money you will starve. Would you undercut? Yes, but not by such a huge amount that it wouldn't make a difference. After all, you need to earn something decent.
- There is no difference in quality. If I find a watch, and it would cost only 10 euro's, I doubt the quality of the watch. Perhaps I would buy it, just because it is only 10 euro's but I wouldn't really use it since I think it will break easily. Out here the only difference is HQ/NQ. Where NQ is still sufficient anyways for most of us. If someone has the same item for half the price. I would buy it since I cannot doubt the quality since it is just the same.
- No control on the market. IRL, in my country at least, you cannot drop prices below a certain margain, not only because the reasons above + it cost you something to buy it (or the materials) from elsewhere. But because the goverment well. governs it?
They make sure there is fair price region. Stunt once in a while, thats ok, but in the end if you have competition it again comes down to quality since you cannot drop the price too far below your competitor since it is not allowed.
These are just some problems we have with the market we have now. I am sure if I would drink my coffee and try to wake up I would come up with more... but not for now