Item Duping???

[Welsper59]

I have seen this (listing multiple stacks of 99 of items that take time to accumulate via crafting, spiritbonding, or gathering) for a while and I've been swearing up and down to my FC that it is from item duping or botting.

In related news, some bonehead on Sargatanas (not going to name names) listed large stacks (55, 40-something, etc.) of Quickarm III materia for ~2K per item when it was going for 8K consistently. It immediately crashed the price to 2K and under as everyone else followed suit and undercut when they listed their individual pieces and single-digit stacks. I saw the same retainer doing the same thing on another item, though I don't remember which item it was. I really don't know what their motive is to dupe/bot so many items and deliberately crash the price unless they are just trying to move a high volume of goods as quickly as possible, even if it does mean making less gil and screwing up the economy for themselves and everyone else in the long run.

That's online gaming economics for yah. A world where the uneducated/uninformed have equal control to everyone else in the market. Not to mention the corrupt (e.g. RMT) being willing to monopolize prices at rates far below the average players worthwhile time.

It sometimes works out to everyone's benefit though. A perfect example would be 2-star equipment. Sure, the profit margins dropped noticeably, but the sale rate has gone up even more (at least for my server). What used to sell once a month, if not longer, now sells several a day. If people simply focus on larger, immediate income (especially when it deals with something that sells slowly because of the cost), they're not looking at the big picture, and will likely fail miserably as a result. In the last week, I've made over a million gil, slowly selling things in a non-aggressive manner, and am nearing two mil. I know it'll sell eventually, and my profits are proof of that. A million is fairly significant on Leviathan's economy.

[Kantide]

Bots I hate and understand but people complaining that others are undercutting them... I have no pity for you. Everything in the game is obtainable for free if you invest the time to do so. The question is, how much time does a gil equate to?

Just because you spent money to buy X mats to make Y to sell for Z, and someone else went out and farmed X to make Y and sold for Z - 50% doesn't mean they are "breaking the market", it means they found a way to be more profitable with slightly more effort. If I can make 100% profit at 50% of the cost an item sells for and sell it faster vs making 20% profit (which may still be less than the farming person made by taking the time to do so), I'll take the larger profit option everytime.

Don't get me wrong, I tend to buy mats and items as I am not a huge fan of crafting or gathering but those who are are doing it right.

[Tupsi]

If I can make 100% profit at 50% of the cost an item sells for and sell it faster vs making 20% profit (which may still be less than the farming person made by taking the time to do so), I'll take the larger profit option everytime.

Here's where your point is lost - we both gather and make the same item, I sell for 3k, you decide to sell for 950g (typical undercut that happens) why would you assume the ones up there were purely bought mats thus deciding to floor the value?

You make a profit all the while screwing someone else doing exactly the same as you.

[Dhex]

Here's where your point is lost - we both gather and make the same item, I sell for 3k, you decide to sell for 950g (typical undercut that happens) why would you assume the ones up there were purely bought mats thus deciding to floor the value?

You make a profit all the while screwing someone else doing exactly the same as you.

So you want the game to do what exactly? Give standardized base pricing that nobody can go below despite the fact that the amount you're deciding to sell the item at is almost entirely based off a value of your own biased and perceived effort in gathering or crafting that item? You want an entire community to agree to that price on a player controlled free market?

Ha.

Haha.

Hahaha.

Good luck with that.

[ArmorKing]

There's some small profit in buying bulk materia III's. If you're a 50 crafter, relic-required i55 items sell pretty good with needed materia already affixed.

I bought a small stack of savage might III's for like 4k each and have been slowly making a buck putting them in SMN books and listing for a higher price.

[SilverRhythm]

This thing probably worth an investigation. I agree having 198 same type of materias is definitely not something that can be done in just a few days. However we also cannot count out another possibility that maybe this person mass bought out materias from another world which is selling way cheaper than the current world you are in now. So he just practically did a world transfer and mass sold the materias.

It is something like a trade for him, using real money for world transfer to get immense amount of gold profit in return.

But still its too troublesome to do so, so I definitely go with either its botting or duping.

[-Genesis-]

Well if the person played in 1.0 it's quite easy to have hundreds of cracked III/IV materia that you can turn into any materia of your choosing @ the salvage NPC.