Gm Elrindonar told Momo to post here on a market board issue

[Snow_Princess]

If you are on Balmung, what you are witnessing is NOT someone "controlling the market". Balmung is one of the most densely populated servers there is, and has a crafting population to match. The only way anyone could control a market for any length of time is if they are the ONLY wealthy crafter of that item. While I could MAYBE see that happening on a low-population server, it simply will not be the case on Balmung; even the most niche items will have dozens upon dozens of people making it, and anyone who tries to crash the market will run out of cash eventually - and then those dozens of other crafters can easily move back in. It's frankly impossible to scare someone away from a market in this game, because there's simply no threat of bankruptcy involved. If a market gets bad, leave, wait for it to stabilize, then come back. It's not like you have to pay business start-up costs, or have debts or loans to pay off.

Since a GM directed you here, my guess is that you contacted the GMs to complain about undercutting, or to accuse a player of trying to control the market. I can tell you now that no GM will do anything about that; they are completely hands-off when it comes to the economy, and thank God. GMs are not economists (note, neither are most players, which is why you see so many bone-headed market moves in the first place), and trying to "fix" things could only make them worse. They will enforce deals that a player attempts to welch on, but that's another thing entirely. If you are trying to sell an item, and it appears that a player is attempting to control the price of that item, simply leave that market. Keep an eye on it, wait until the player tries to raise the price again, and then sell. Meanwhile, continue to profit on other products instead.

There's also players who mistake the natural decrease in prices of an item as being some player conspiracy. In the case of ilvl 250 gear, it's perfectly normal for the first couple units to sell for a mint, and then for the price to drop considerably over time as more and more crafters try to cash in. The same will happen for the ingredients used to make those items. Before throwing around accusations of market manipulation, best to make sure that the market isn't actually just behaving normally!

You are not from here, Not a lot of people continuously make things to sell. You might have a random here and there but for the most part all things are controlled by 1-3 people. My guess why this is an issue is because gil is worthless and people do not want to put time in something they will not get something out of. Some people like trying to collect much gil as possible, and those are the people controlling things, and that does include me, only to a lesser extent. I do other things to play with friends and such but even that is wearing thin and thinking about quitting all together. However the poor economy of this game has nothing to do with me wondering if I should quit or not. I am just here saying this is a problem and if you want to ignore that, then that is on you. People are controlling the markets and if you cant see that then its??? (idk) It is something I did myself too on some items, it is easy to keep undercutting someone, till they get tired of it, once theirs sell, I am solo at high price again. (If I was really mean, I could of easily undercut spam them back, buy it low, then sell theirs at a high price with mine, however I do have some self respect and respect in others not doing that.) Still we need to ask ourselves, even on a high pop server such as Balmung how come people do not keep crafting? My answer is people simply do no need to since gil is worthless in the end of things. I am not the only one to say this, as it was repeatedly said on these forums for a while now.

for the 250 stuff, again I do not care, but it is extremely baffling to see people selling HQ results for less then it costs to make it. There are big problems with the economy and the reason the FF team does nothing is likely because people seem to think there is not one (going by this thread) and that is shocking to me.

OP, the market is not that hard to get a piece of. Find an item, invest, sell. If someone else moves on your market, it only takes a few hours to determine whether or not you can float enough cash to call their bluff. From another angle, many common consumables (e.g. silver ingots, walnut lumber) are price-fixed by default. Only a handful of people are selling it, and we all seem to consistently list at about the same price (this is the case on my server at least). If you're talking about big-ticket items, the problem isn't a cornering of the market, the problem is many of them require some pretty outrageous minimum stats, so of course only a few people are making/selling them. The i250 crafted gear needs min. 995 crafting or something crazy like that. How many people are running around your server with those numbers?

Alternative advice: Sell furniture. People will pay unconscionable sums of gil for a couch.

I am not complaining about making money. I really do not care this point. My concern is simply, the economy FFXIV has always been a failure since 2.0. The only reason it took this long to speak up about it, is I had no means of posting about it till now. People are fully capable of controlling the market and easily exploitable, the only question is how far will someone go? or wants to go, or wants to bother. The ability of doing so is defiantly there, however.

~~~Momo

[Dement]

On Balmung, people let markets get controlled. There are tons of crafters on this server and very few of them have the foresight to realize that you can make more money making low and mid level gear than making 250 stuff.

You said yourself that the 250 stuff is selling HQ below the cost of materials. That's because Balmung has so many crafters but they all only focus on the big ticket items. This leaves people who are willing to take the time or have excess mats to move into lower tiers and set whatever prices they desire, thus appearing to control the market. However, the barriers to entry for these items are pretty low. Most anyone who has leveled a crafter can move into them to some degree or another, they just choose not to and then complain that they can't make any gil.

I don't think it's a sign of an unhealthy economy necessarily, it's a sign that there are a ton of crafters on Balmung and very few of them have any inkling of business sense. Undercutting on this server is insane though, I will give you that. I personally would prefer an anonymous Auction House to the Market Board.

[Snow_Princess]

That is incorrect, that happens because 2 people spam undercut each other till that point. It has nothing to do with how many focus on what. I focused on stuff all levels, and it is the same story.

~Momo

[Aniforani]

Specialist system isn't really a great blockade since you can swap them. I still have 11 souls and that's after I swapped a few times.
This really wasn't a great patch for crafters. The item level boost was ok, but the materials required to make them benefited players spending time in dungeons more than those spending time gathering and crafting. Sadly I made most of my gil this patch selling off materia I didn't need and crafting three star tools/gear to those catching up. Right now those old 3 star DoH/L crafts are cheaper to make, yet sell for more than most of the new 4 star DoW/M items.