Undercut Hell

[Havenchild]

Actually no. I know on your individual item it might seem that way, but you're failing to see the big picture. Think of all the gil sink items in this game. Housing is a good example. By keeping market prices high, those same buyers can sell their stuff at a higher amount thus being able to afford gil sink items like housing. When you keep market prices low, it makes it harder for everyone to make money and you have actually made the game more difficult for those buyers you thought you were helping.

You take "longer" to make that money, which is what your trying to get at but that's half truth. If you spend less money all around, you also save money faster all around and stack up quicker. The way the system is setup as well, you can make a lot of money simply from dungeons and Roulette Bonuses daily.

IE: Spending less money on your materia for your Novus, now having the ability to pour that into housing.

[Amenian]

snip

You're still thinking short term. Yes, at first the 1 gil undercutting method takes longer. Eventually though you reach max fair market price, which is where you want to be for the best economy and the stuff sells at about the same rate as it's put up. This will fluctuate with supply and demand of course, but the ideal is to maintain maximum fair market price. Large undercuts skip over this value and over time end up lowering the maximum fair market price. Lower it far enough and those people responsible for supplying the item will leave the market and you've created a scarcity. So now, not only have you made the economy less over all, which hurts everybody, but you've also made it harder to find those items you are looking for.

[AdamFyi]

Snip

No, supply didn't seem to increase. The values I gave were one after another. It took 4 people to drop it in value signifigantly. Purchase history also shows that the average buying price was 800k before the drop, so there's that. And just so you know, not everyone has the kind of gil to buy out the cheap ones and sell them again. Take into consideration of someone undercutting again.

The main reason is that Waterproof Cotton is gotten from desynthesis of a 3* fish or a bikini. They're quite rare to add.

[giantslayer]

Undercutting is fine, its how you make your sale, being the top of that list.. but do it by sensible ammounts and stop ruining the economy.

So what I hear you saying is that low prices for consumers caused by competition ruin economies?

[Nyalia]

I used to think like you did, and then I started crafting more with more money banked. There were many, many times recently when I've undercut by thousands, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands. For instance, 2.4 comes out with a trivial way to get FC3s, but a high need for FC3s. The market is doing well at first because people don't realize what's changed, so you undercut by only a bit. You don't want to overcut, because other people are going to realize the trick soon enough, so you want things to sell ASAP. Then, someone else starts undercutting you, probably doing the same thing as you. You need to sell quickly before the price totally tanks, so you undercut by more, and more, until you're undercutting from 500,000 to 200,000.

Remember, if you make 10x items and 1 item sells at 500,000 and 9 sit there until the price tanks to 100,000, but you could have sold 10x at 300,000 in the same time, and the item cost you about ~30,000 each to make, you've just gained 1,350,000 instead of 2,985,000, and that's assuming you even managed to sell the 9x at 100k when others have figured things out and the market is saturated. For FC3s, the market price stabilized (for now) at 70k, when they were selling for 500k when the patch hit. If I had left all my FC3s at pre-patch prices just to avoid undercutting people, I'd be a lot poorer right now.


Also, consider more common examples, which have all happened to me.

A retainer brings you back a semi-valuable item you have no use for. You are constantly selling things on your retainers and rarely have enough sale spots for everything you want to sell. The item is selling for only 15k, but you want to sell some materia for 100k-500k in that spot. If the cheaper item sits there too long, you lose profit. So, you can either vendor the 15k item, or put it up for like, 10k and have it sell super fast so you can get back to selling what you wanted to.

You've made tons of equipment for Spiritbonding. Then, the market shifts and now the most valuable materia is of a different class (DoH instead of DoL for instance). You have two sets of the old equipment that you haven't started bonding yet, and you want to make room in your inv for the new SB equipment. The old stuff is selling for about 20k each. You have ~22 items to sell, since you had two full sets of it, so you want it to move fast. So, you put it up for 10k-15k each to get them out of your inventory quickly. Sure, you could have just discarded the items, but selling 22 items for 15k each is a good 330k, which is hardly nothing.

Or, let's say an item is up for 2m. The last sale was 2.5m, but that was weeks ago. It's been sitting at 2m for a long time. You get one. Do you put it up at 2m just to avoid undercutting, and let two sit there forever, unbought? In that case, I would put it up for 1.5m, undercutting by 500k. If it didn't sell in a reasonable time, I'd drop it further, possibly as far as 1m. Chances are higher of new market influx dropping the value way below that than the chance that someone will buy yours at the higher price, where it's sat for weeks unbought.

There are tons of other situations too. You made the wrong item and want to get rid of it asap because you're annoyed, and you just want to get back the cost you spent to make it. You made a bunch of items for desynth and then realized there was a cheaper way, so you wanted to get the gil back that the materials cost for the items, or at least soften the blow to your wallet. You need initial capital to get started and buy bulk materials. You were given the items as payment for services rendered in lieu of gil (yes, that has happened to me before). You need an HQ mat and get an NQ one instead, so you put up the NQ mat at cost hoping to quickly make the money back you spent. You want to clear inventory space on your retainers, so you want things to move quickly, so you undercut by a lot to facilitate that. You're about to go on vacation and won't be able to log on for a few days, but you want things to sell while you're gone that are currently depreciating in value, so you undercut a lot hoping the others selling them will hesitate before lowering their prices to match.


So, in short, there are plenty of reasons that are, to me, totally legitimate for undercutting. I used to stay in a fairly small market and got pissed when people broke into it with seemingly unreasonable undercuts. Then, I stopped whining and learned to live with the flow, constantly changing markets as holding items when the sale value gets low but I think it'll go up.

Just because something has a specific value to you doesn't mean it has the same value to them. To me, the difference between an item selling at 20k with the others and not having it sell, and undercutting the others by putting the item up at 15k and having it sell, the difference is one way gets you 15k, one gets you nothing.

[Havenchild]

snip

Which eventually re-balances the price when they become scarce due to supply and demand. You see this with X-Potions and food for example. It starts high -> decreases as undercutting happens (more people enter this market), but eventually at the end of raiding season they tend to pick up much higher (due to many merchs buying them in bulk at low, and inflating the value). It's all about knowing when to buy/sell to make the most profit, anyone can make big money in this game by simply working the market in your favor. No item is also limited to one person, you are able to get any item in the game if you want for free. Some items that are exclusive to a few are far over priced considering where it comes from. Allagan Silk or Leather for example should not be priced at 375k+ as a "fair price", when it's farmable in a premade party via ez mode T1 ->T4.

[NyarukoW]

No, supply didn't seem to increase. The values I gave were one after another. It took 4 people to drop it in value signifigantly. ... They're quite rare to add.

Then buy them and sell at 800K and profit. Their loss is your gain. No guts? No patience? Dumb undercutters are a flippers best friend. Buy low sell high. You can't buy low when everyone wants max gil for their items.

... Lower it far enough and those people responsible for supplying the item will leave the market and you've created a scarcity. So now, not only have you made the economy less over all, which hurts everybody, but you've also made it harder to find those items you are looking for.

This is utter nonsense. If there is real demand for the item, there will always be people supplying it as long as their is profit to be made. If people are selling at a loss, flippers will make up the difference in the market and make the profit, just like those in real life who buy up whole inventories of businesses shutting down and reselling them. You can not create scarcity because their are too many sellers and the prices are lower, and in no ways can it make the item harder to find because there are more sellers.

[Meshico]

I am fully prepared to get shot down in this thread by the undercutters themselves but I just don't understand these people and it's driving me insane.

TLDR

Undercutting is fine, its how you make your sale, being the top of that list.. but do it by sensible ammounts and stop ruining the economy.

and I am not interested in any trolly comments they won't be read or responded to, I put this up because I believe its valid and the sensible people here will agree

Undercutting by one gil, really infuriates me more than someone undercutting by 175k, for the reasons already stated.

In this very specific instance...I'm ok with what has happened. (for reasons already stated.

The moral of the story is, don't undercut by 1 FRIGGIN GIL.

Good luck in the future and read these posts carefully to learn something...or just reinforce something that you have forgotten.

-Tari

[Razzle]

Don't overprice and then you won't be undercut by so much pretty simple really

[AdamFyi]

Then buy them and sell at 800K and profit.

Sometimes I wonder if you actually read the whole post instead of skimming through it and looking for points that you can argue against just for the sake of a counter argument.

And just so you know, not everyone has the kind of gil to buy out the cheap ones and sell them again.

I was lucky enough to catch the 3* fish, then fight against the desynthesis failures and successes that yielded nothing only to get shot down once I got something rare. Do you have any empathy for people who try their best?