Undercutting

[RichardButte]

For the record, there's nothing wrong with undercutting and I have no objection to it.

It's undercutting needlessly by ridiculous amounts that I hate.

[jomoru]

Sarcasm is new and unique! I have never seen it before and am glad it was brought up!

What? Either I'm serious and this thread is serving a point or if I'm sarcastic then this thread is a waste of time because we had the exact same thing last week.

[DefendPopPunk]

What? Either I'm serious and this thread is serving a point or if I'm sarcastic then this thread is a waste of time because we had the exact same thing last week.

If you were serious then that would mean this thread is "new and unique," according to your original post, not "serving a point." Yet you just admitted it is the same as one last week. So then...it must be sarcastic? Aside from that, it didn't really add anything to the discussion, so it's kind of a borderline troll post. And you just came back solely to defend it for some reason. *shrug*

[Fyrebrand]

What do you care, what other people sell their items for? If they prefer to sell their stuff quickly, and are willing to make less profit than they perhaps could have, that's their option. And if you think you can exercise enough patience to hold out for a better sell price, then by all means, list your item for what you think is fair. But from the sounds of it, you don't seem all that patient at all. You sound like an amateur who wants to play the market with a get-rich-quick scheme, but are getting frustrated that it isn't happening overnight.

As others have suggested, if you feel that someone is selling something for much less than it could have sold for, go ahead and buy it yourself. Then sell it for higher. If you can.

[StateAlchemist]

It's a fact of life. People want instant gratification to the point that they will hurt themselves without even thinking about it just to get their money now, instead of waiting a few hours and getting 5x more.

[Scootaloo]

Seriously, undercutting is apart of any economy and business, real life businesses to it to each other all the time.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Undercuting becomes a problem on slow selling high budget items. Where you can se usually a few listings like 2 or 3 and just a few more on history. Usually high end crafters on this case tends to match the price of the first seller, at least the ones with "etiquette" so the one who sells becomes completely random on about who is the buyer gonna pick since they are all at the same price. Problem with undercut is:

1.- Player new to the market gets into it and forces a crash from lets say, 5.000.000 to 2.000.000. Of course you could "flip" it, but on slow items that flip could give you rewards a few weeks later.
2.- Player new to the market sells the item cheaper than the materials. Let say an ifrit i95 weapon cost 2.000.000 millions to make, rounding the ifrit horn to 1 mill, the BCIII to 1 mill and giving away the other materials. New player puts the ifrit weapon at 1.700.000.

The reasons for the second one are usually the wrong thought of "if i got it myself (retainer, drop, gathering) so is free cause i didn`t invest any money and i can undercut as much as i want cause others spend money". Well, no, there isn`t such a thing as a "free" item on the economy, even if you didn`t spend a single gil on the items, they still have value, and use those materials to craft something is still an investment. And in both escenarios all players are losing money, cause the undercutter is getting less money than he could have by sticking to the average prices or by selling lower than the materials price, and the other players lose their chance to sell that item, which is a loss for everyone selling.

Now about the undercutting itself, is normal, yet it could be controled by a few market restrictions and options that are most needed, in fact the whole MB could use some serious enhancements beyond the listing and the interface.

-A limit on how much you could undercut someone, or at least, a warning before listing at +15% under the cheapest item that warns you are about to damage the market.
-A tool that allows MB players to know the average price of the items, so you don`t have people undercuting without proper information, history of sells just doesnt make it, in fact is natural to see jumps and drops of 500% on several items all over the place.
-Buy orders. Seriously. Players don`t have a way to know what players efectively want (demanding sucks, i play on cactuar, highly populated server and demanded items are so low, barely above 100... obviusly people doesnt care about demaning) and how much they are willing to pay.

That alone would stabilize the markets and stop the cobalt halberd at 6.000 gil, next day, 54.000 gil. And that repeats all over the place, and as time goes on, more and more players get to the 3 star markets and things just get worse and worse. The devaluation is normal, what is not normal is see how augmented saurian items for example, are being undercut even up to 2 times less than their actual material costs, which includes all the materials of the normal tabard, which is, just fun. The solution to undercutting is not just flipping. Undercutting is normal and a form of competition on properly regulated markets, on a absolutely free market with just a 5% fee for the gil sink, undercutting is actually hurting us all and in fact, making fair competition almost impossible.

You can`t regulate human "specialness", but you can regulate the markets.

[Azper]

I love undercutting. Market Board Wars is the highlight of my day sometimes.

[Dashuto]

It is quite possible I will be found out for posting this.

But I have made sure my retainers on my server can be recognized by sight, and are notorious. I do massive amounts of selling and repurchase through them, and I always use them to make a point.

Any time someone undercuts me, I undercut them very severely, and I am willing to crash/ruin the specific market we share just to teach them that lesson. I have even crashed a market because of people attempting to purchase from me and then resell with a price fix. I make them regret that thoroughly as well and sell at a loss.

It has taken almost a year, but now people seem to know who my retainers are, and they patiently wait their turn behind mine for its stuff to sell. This has paid off in the long run. There is occasionally an ignorant undercutter, and I quickly ruin their life unless it is not worth my time. This works out, as I like to diversify my options when possible, so I prefer to put a handful of items up in each market I'm working with and wake to them having all sold overnight. When I actually want profit, I avoid flooding and ruining.

I will not pretend I am a good person, but business is business, and I will be as ruthless as I need to be to come out on top. I find it a little entertaining maneuvering back and forth with people employing my same strategies.

[Scootaloo]

snip

No, your stupid. Undercutting is one thing but crashing an in game economy for the personal satisfaction of "Whoo! I taught them a lesson!" is down right borderline retardation.

The only thing your doing is making sure the people who don't have the gil to buy items on your server suffer more than they already are because you wanna know what happens after a market crashes?

It inflates ten fold.

We're seen it happen everytime the stock market crashed in the real world.

Once the economy recovers from the crash, businesses jack up their prices in an effort to recover the profits lost, the result is the government being forced to print more money to counterbalance this inflation.

The difference between in game economies and real life is that no extra money can be put into circulation by SE.