I really don't want to moan about undercutting but....

[Wilbow]

Pricing your item .002% lower than your competitor might look like undercutting, but it's not. That's selling the same thing for the same price, but doing it an underhanded way to ensure yours sells first. It does nothing to move the market toward equilibrium. It does not benefit buyers in any real way -- saving one gil on your Vanya Robe is like saving a fraction of a penny on a PS4. Rather than incentivizing efficiency, it encourages crafters to stand in front of the market board for hours constantly rejiggering their prices.

It is the economic equivalent of elbowing your way to the front of the line. Crashing the market for a few days is my way of disincentivizing this behavior.

Oh, please try that. It's not like people with money won't, you know, buy your item for half price, re-post it, undercut by 5 gil anyways, and make a ton of cash. No wait, I will. Keep on doing that.

And you know what? Those small undercuts add up over time and MAKE a stable economy; most items, like dyes, can decrease about 10-25% in value a day if they're overpriced. All you do is screw over yourself as the crafter and make the price of items vary wildly, never hitting equilibrium, making it impossible for anybody to ever know if they'll be able to afford something beforehand (or make a profit if they sell something).

God forbid that I get rewarded for raising the skills to 50, buying the crafting gear, melding it, finding markets where demand exists, projecting the cost of items and balancing profit margin with the rate at which I can sell something, esp. with limited slots for selling. Oh no. We get deluded, self-righteous people like you DEMANDING that intelligent and reasonable people do something incredibly stupid, and then try to sabotage a marketplace when people don't listen to your incoherent rambling, which backfires because we see that pathetic crap, exploit it, and make more cash.

Cry more. Or maybe if you have a REALLY big boo-boo on your oh-so-hurt feelings, buy the items from the guy that isn't undercutting instead. It only works because people let it work; if people suddenly STOPPED buying the item that is 5 gil cheaper, it would stop. However, people obviously have no reason to punish people who are attentive enough to keep undercutting their items because that constant warring DRAMATICALLY lowers the cost of everything they buy.

It's simple, you go by percentages. On an item that sells for 50k+, undercutting by even 1k is meaningless. If you start undercutting by 5k or 10k, you discourage your competitors who are looking to undercut you in turn from doing so, as it would mean they would have to drop by the same amount.

No, I don't have to. Why would I have to do that? In fact, most people either:
A) Undercut you by 1-10 gil, which means that they get their item sold first (you'd have to FORCE the market board to have you undercut by a certain %, which would basically screw over crafters and buyers, as then I'm forced to overprice the hell out of whatever I'm selling so that any of us crafters makes a profit; it also gives rich trolls an easy way to collapse markets).
B) If you undercut ENOUGH and the market is hot enough, I'll simply buy and re-sell (like I said before).