lets talk about undercutters.

[Blitzace]

So before we go in, Let me clarify. I'm not talking about a person who drops the price by a small amount.

So here i am, crafting my stuff that i've been selling since 3.0 with a very steady income. items that i'm making selling for around 100-200k HQ. NQ goes for 20-50k.

The things that make me wonder,

1. Why put up 10 HQ items for the same amount as the NQ versions? That is just totally ruining the price on em. And seeing no increase of sale speed makes me even wonder why more.

2. People that put up lets say, Some sort of accessory. 15 at one time. Why not split those 15 items in different ones so you don't overflow the market? It just makes me wonder how people sometimes think. If your end goal is to make money, You are just cutting yourself here as the price will drop every day with more people trying to sell these items.

See, now i never put up more then 2-3x of the same item. Unless i know they sell very fast. And with the exeption of rings which people usually tend to buy in pairs.


Even for fun. i made some of the easiest items to make from 3.0 (51) recipes. Bought out the MB and put em up for a 100k while other people put these items up for 10-15-20k. And guess what they sell, Surely enough not as fast. But they do infact sell daily. Now i'm not saying sell them for 100k, But you can easily bump the price up to 30-40k with these items and people won't think twice of buying them.

Why can't people seem to grasp the fact you don't need to undercut by 200% to sell something? especially if you're gonna make multiple items of it. Per item you make and undercut by that much. For every item you sold you potentially lose such a big amount of gil.

Now i either just buy out these people or wait for them to sell their stuff and hope they don't make more :-)!

[Kaiser-Ace]

When I sell in bulk I'll undercut by about 20-30% per item depending on how many I'm trying to push. Single items, I'll cut 5-10% off of the lowest number to push it faster.

Other wise, if I don't make at least 5-6 times what it's NPC value is, it goes to the NPCs.

[TeyaRodar]

Given that the game doesn't really provide a crash course in Market Board economics, it's understandable that a large group of players will not fully understand how market trends work, or that listing a price for higher doesn't mean that it will sell less often, (assuming that it's the correct price). I chock it up to some people being inept at using the market board properly, others being impatient for gil and needing it fast, or a small subset that is intentionally undercutting for...whatever reason. A very small subset of the population will be undercutting because they know the exact cost of a craft, and they realise that they still profit even when undercutting the lowest MB price at the time.

While undercutting may be annoying, it does become a convenience for those of us who can use the MB well enough to buy things low and sell them high. So I don't really complain unless the price is forced down to a vastly unreasonable amount, and there's a risk of it staying there.

[Eye_Gore]

Why can't people seem to grasp the fact you don't need to undercut by 200% to sell something? especially if you're gonna make multiple items of it. Per item you make and undercut by that much. For every item you sold you potentially lose such a big amount of gil.

Because they don't care and because they can. There are tons of threads and posts about this very topic its been beaten to death as much as the tank STR gear controversy, which thankfully has seemed to go by the wayside.

[Risvertasashi]

Given that the game doesn't really provide a crash course in Market Board economics, it's understandable that a large group of players will not fully understand how market trends work, or that listing a price for higher doesn't mean that it will sell less often, (assuming that it's the correct price).

Or they're trying to drive you out of the market.

I also suspect a lot of the people that complain about undercutters also list 5, 10, or more of the same item, which does more to drive down prices than anything else...

[LeeraSorlan]

Its mainly because people want gil, dont matter if its 50% less than what they couldve got in 3 days, fast gil.

A funny story about an undercutter, i was trying to sell my kingly whisker for 10 mil, there was always 1 other guy that undercut me, not by a huge amount, but i noticed eventually he would undercut me no matter how low i went, so i tried putting my whisker at 2.5 mil, an sure enough he put his for 2.3mil. So i bought his whisker and repriced both at 10 mil and they sold within a week.


Just shows some people dont want the most gil, they want the fastest gil.

[Risvertasashi]

A funny story about an undercutter, i was trying to sell my kingly whisker for 10 mil, there was always 1 other guy that undercut me, not by a huge amount, but i noticed eventually he would undercut me no matter how low i went, so i tried putting my whisker at 2.5 mil, an sure enough he put his for 2.3mil. So i bought his whisker and repriced both at 10 mil and they sold within a week.

And that's how you do it. Buy, relist.

[JackHatchet]

I've been listing my HQs for lower than the normal qualities. I have a space issue, and they move a lot faster that way. I get a wider market share if I'm willing to sell a HQ item for the price of a standard quality. Also, sometimes selling items really cheap results in more buyers, as people are willing to buy and resell. So the best way to move items is to sell them cheap. That seems logical right?

The problem is that a lot of people think crafting is ALL ABOUT TEH BENJAMINS! When in reality there's a lot of different reasons people sell items on the market board. Some people get them from quests/retainers and want to bed rid of them. Others like me just enjoy crafting, and don't care what I get as long as I'm not in the red. The other day I was finishing out my crafting competition log, and ended up with a lot of extra HQ items. Sure, I could vendor them, but it's also just as easy to list them for 20% the total price of the competition. I sell an item, and an adventurer or a reseller get a bonus out of it.

I'm still constantly surprised by greedy people who get so angry about under-cutters. Like seriously, for real! If you want to play the market then you can't be ignorant to the market. Undercutting is part of the game, and you can't just pick and choose the easy parts and bitch about the hard parts. That's life. If you don't like undercutters then you shouldn't be in the market board game. So instead of complaining about it ignorantly, because you want money--try to learn why it happens, and realize that markets are pretty organic and they're driven by people. People change. Learn to adapt, or don't. I don't really care. Just by my items so my inventory can be empty.

[JackHatchet]

Now i either just buy out these people

he put his for 2.3mil. So i bought his whisker

This post isn't even 8 replies in, and there's already two examples of sellers who are willing to become buyers if the price is right. Pretty basic proof that undercutting items causes them to sell faster.

If your end goal is to make money

Part of the problem is you assume you understand the logic of other people. Not everyone wants to make the most amount of money. Some people want fast money, and other people want to move items. Others are leveling up, and still some get retainer junk. Then sometimes you get folks who need to do some spring cleaning of either their inventory or a free company vault. A lot of people hoard random shit all the time. Every so often one of them decides that hoarding isn't right, and throws up 12 sublingars on the MB at the cheapest price. Fuck those sublingars!

[Alsar]

I only have 2 retainers and they're constantly at 20 full sell slots. I'm undercutting so it sells faster.