The Marketboard can be nuts.

[LystAP]

I was surprised to find this around. People get really competitive about stuff.

[HaelseMikiro]

if that was gilgamesh I'd be undercutting for 4k ><

[Big_Panda]

So at least 8 extra retainers just to send a message?

Anyway, if I was a small time supplier (i.e. occasional has one or two such items to sell), I'd just undercut by 500 or so.

I know he will snatch it up right away to cover his market. But I still sold my stuff.

[aesteval]

...that tops anything that I've done.

[Tracewood]

I'll find a market where they'll be nothing there, and I'll start selling items. Next day or two, three or more retainers show up and undercut me by almost 50%. I used to do well with furnishings but those markets seem to crash far more often now.

[Clethoria]

Black dye, last I checked, on Ultros was over 1mil. Meanwhile, on the JP servers (I forget which one) it's under 100k. Players have the right to sell at any price they deem fit, but I feel like a lot of this abuse could be avoided if there was a bigger tax on selling. You list the item for 1mil, you pay 30k to list it. You want to sell for 5gil, you pay 2gil to list it. Or something like that. Also, decreasing the number of items you can sell at once character wide regardless of retainer. Once you hit a threshold (say, 10-20 items) that tax increases.

Now, I don't want to have the entire planet punished over something that seems to be an NA server only problem. But it seems like it would slow people down or at least make them think twice.

Also, maybe doing something about gear awareness too. I've seen craftable gear sold from NPCs across the world on the MB for triple if not quadruple their price.

[Bloody]

Well, that's hilarious. Balmung be full of mad marketeers, apparently.

@Clethoria, I'm not sure a higher tax rate or graduated tax bracket like the US has for income would do anything more than irritate sellers. Supply and demand are strong influencers of pricing as well, and if people aren't trying to increase supply of popular dyes, then prices will go up and that's fine, especially since the only barrier to entering the market is "send a retainer out and hope to get lucky a few times."

[Zojha]

@Clethoria, I'm not sure a higher tax rate or graduated tax bracket like the US has for income would do anything more than irritate sellers.

It would go a long way to fight gil inflation, which supposedly is a big issue on NA/EU servers due to RMT. The current market tax is already probably the most efficient gil sink we have.

I doubt it would really irritate sellers, though - They'd just increase their prices to match. We do not have perfect competition, so pricing is pretty much arbitrary and there's nothing preventing sellers from just upping them to match if they're taxed higher.

[Bloody]

That's kind of what I meant, Zojha. Increasing taxes wouldn't cause a reduction in prices, but just the opposite, because sellers would be annoyed that their profits and margins dropped. While it may be useful as a gil sink to help deal with saturation from RMT, it screws over the honest portion of our population.

[ManuelBravo]

Undercutting is a well used tool in business to cripple the competition. Buy low Sell high a merchants motto. Also depending on the demand more people are willing to buy higher quantities for lower prices than lower quantities for higher prices unless they really don't plan on crafting much. To be honest I sometimes undercut my own retainers just to test the market.