Idea against Undercutting at the Marketboard (The next.. )

[BreathlessTao]

Personally, I've pretty much given up on crafting. Try to get my crafters to 50, very slowly, when I really don't have anything better to do, but that's it; even my first, best equipped DoH class is only i54.

Anyhow - maybe SE playing marketboard police wouldn't be the best thing on the whole. But when something drops 50k in price in just a few hours (happened to me, not only once)... Something needs to be done there, because that's just beyond insane. A limit on how much prices can be undercut - but then it would either have to be very strict, or the same thing would happen again. Or a limit on how often prices can be undercut, say every few hours or half a day, that might be a better solution. Perhaps a combination of these two. But yeah, something, anything, really.

[Gillionaire]

snip

If you take crafting as a side endeavor, then you're by no means a crafter in this game..

Most crafters craft as their main thing and pve on the side. Some don't even partake in pve contents at all.

Also, when somebody undercuts you like that, they're TRYING to make you quit, so if you've given up on crafting, then they've succeeded in eliminating the competition. Simple as that.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

We can remedy this situation by adopting the FF11 way of marketboarding/auctioning. You make it blind. People can see what other people are paying, but that is it. You don't know how much an item is until its sold. This ensures people have to pay fairly and people can still get a good deal if people decide to undercut and the person buying pays the amount they set. This also ensures items retain their value over a long period of time. Its a win for both sides in the long run.

Just for clarifications purposes, if you don't know what a blind auction is, here is a small explanation...

I'm selling a potion, I throw it on the board for 100gil, no one knows the price except for the past history of people who bought potions. Another person puts up a potion for 50gil, undercutting me by half. Now we have a person who wants to buy a potion, he decides what he wants to pay for the potion. He checks the price history see the last one sold for 130 gil. He decides to try to get a deal and goes to 100 gil. He doesn't buy my potion, but buys the other guys, who set his for 50gil, but he still paid 100 gil for it, so it says 100gil in the history. Now another person wants a potion, and he sees the history, last one sold for 100gil today, cool, let me try 100gil, then he buys mine for the price I set.

Of course this isn't full proof, somebody could set the bar really low, like 10 gil, just to try to move things faster, and somebody could steal your stuff if they decided to play the board against you, buying all your items for 10gil, because you wanted to try to move your item sales along, BUT I feel like it'd be the best way to try to keep the markets intact and keep undercutting to a minimum, and still retain item value longterm.

[Gillionaire]

. . . still retain item value longterm.

But that's exactly the point. Why do we need policing on the undercutting issue? Why is that an issue in the first place?
People act as though undercutters are driving them down below point of profitability.. But that is not the case at all, most of the time I see profit margins of 300-400% on the MB and that is just pure bloat caused by lack of competition.

On the one hand, we have a bunch of people complaining that items are too expensive on MB and on the other, we also have people complaining about people driving prices down on the MB.. I say let us, the players sort that out and quite frankly, if you think you can't complete or you'd rather not because the competition is so fierce (i.e. annoying) then maybe the MB game is not for you, just unload at 80% regular price and be 20% poorer than the people who will bother with the tedium

[AireTamStorm]

I undercut almost every time I sell. Granted I don't do crafting or the like, if I get a hot item I look at the MB, see what it goes for an cut it by about 5-10%. Why? I didn't put any real effort to getting it, so me taking a 5% isn't anything big. Plus, when I look at the MB for a lot of stuff, there's a bunch of people selling the stuff at the same price. What is going to make random player-1 from picking my retainer over the other 29 who are selling?

Oh yeah, a price cut.

Even if I was doing a massive crafting/mining session I would still try to cut a small % off to make mine stand out more. It's basic economics - and it applies to in game too. If that makes me a jerk or someone who needs to be "regulated", so be it I guess.

[Gillionaire]

Yep, and that's why you'll be richer than some other person who just lists an item, comes back 3 days later to find it's been undercut and comes to the forums to complain about the system not working in their favor. You put more thought and time into it, you get more gil out of the MB, simple as that.

[Conradus]

Welcome to a real market. No, we won't put nerf padding around all the sharp edges. Deal with it.

[Xenosan]

All this debate is over semantics.

Undercutting and price(value) reduction due to abundant supply/slow turn-over are not the same thing.

[Whatever]

True, they may not be the same thing, However, supply and demand will influence whether someone will be more likely to undercut at a more severe price if the primary reason is just to move stock. Add in other motivations and let the pricecutting begin.

[Conradus]

Mining/Botany is a revenue generating activity and crafting said materials into something to increase the revenue potential. To me it is all revenue generation. It doesn't cost you anything to gather said materials except for the repair costs. So all in all your cost - profit ratio is significantly higher especially if you have the crafting prowess to be able to do your own repairs. If you want to debate the repair costs go for it but the revenue from said materials will be higher than your repairs even if you vendor so it is a wash. So something that doesn't cost you anything is.... free

Sigh. Look, mats you gather aren't free because you can *sell* them. So, if you use them to synth, they've cost you what you could have sold them for. Now, if what you synth out of them is worth more than the materials, yeah, you've come out ahead. Generally, that seems to be the case these days in FFXIV markets, but never lose sight of the opportunity cost of using your gathered mats instead of selling them. They're never free.