Extreme Undercutting - Should it be a violation?

[silentwindfr]

well it's one of the most absurd thing about AH in any mmorpg, and even more here, some item are sold at lost, means selling them to npc will bring more gil or.... it will not even bring cash to the person to post this price.
now do that must be a violation, i'm not sure, it bother me too, because a lot of person do it with the goal to crash the market... and reap most of the profit later when people don't sell this stuff anymore by reselling all the stuff they did purchase a low price or even just to acquire material at low cost.

sadly only the crafter and gatherer can really do this then... they are the one mostly affected.

[Princess_Momoka]

I'm aware of how it started. I replied to a post that to me, seemed a very blunt and categorical criticism of how someone else plays, not an economics discussion. I replied without attacking and was promptly told my response was ridiculous. If you want to take someone to task start with the one initiating attacks.

Because you are not looking at the full picture, what you where replying to was a continuation on the economic point of view, and in such view, Nixxie is correct. Even if you are having a goal to level a DPS, that route is not most time efficient, this fitting "it is a waste of time" The correct answer would be making a healer/tank friend to level your dps class in DFs. It was clear it was a discussion on time efficiently since it started out as a pure economic argument.

I fully understand opportunity cost. I don't treat a game as real life so it is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned when I'm in the game. In real life the game is free time so has no value and there is no reason from my perspective to try and give it value in the game.

If I am going to do some crafting I gather whatever material I need to make the item. If I cannot obtain the item myself I buy it. I don't care that I can buy something off the board and not have to gather as gathering is part of the game I like. Collecting minions, gear, running dungeons and housing are also things I like to do. I don't sit down and do a cost analysis on every thing I make or sell. I do keep a close enough track to not sell for a loss but my time isn't part of that consideration. As I said it has no cost because I would be doing the activity or something else I liked anyway. I also price items at what I think is a reasonable price. Sometimes that might be the market range and at others significantly below it. Getting top gill isn't important when the game provides enough in its various ways to support what I want to do.

Your argument can't do B while doing A is a bit of a stretch. It doesn't upset me that when I'm doing A I can't do B or if B becomes important it isn't a big deal to drop A. I play the game for the duration I want and then logoff. If I didn't do everything offered in the game I don't care it will be there tomorrow. I get the feeling many folks take this game too seriously and treat it as a surrogate for real life. For me if I ever get to that point then it is time to quit as I've already done all of it in RL so why do it again.

Just because you do not "treat the game as real life" (No clue what that means, saying this does not void the existence of opportunity cost) does not magically change there is no cost:

If your end-goal is "acquire those pets", then the most efficient route is to buy them. If you choose not to achieve the goal through that route, you are definitionally choosing a less efficient route (thus giving up the opportunity cost) because you find it more enjoyable to do so. Your choice does not remove the opportunity cost; you still pay it.

There is no activity in the game where there is no relative cost involved in partaking of it. It doesn't matter how much you tell yourself otherwise. It doesn't matter what you do, what you say, what you tell yourself; every action you take you do so in place of another action. Every single thing you do, you pay an opportunity cost. You (often unknowingly or subconsciously) make the decision that your enjoyment of that activity is worth the opportunity cost of not doing something else. It doesn't matter if you see the worth in the opposing choice or not. It doesn't matter if you think you don't value the outcome of those other actions.

Opportunity cost is as inescapable as time. It is literally how we define the difference between outcomes of actions vs other actions. It's like trying to say that seconds are unimportant to you because you don't need anymore time. The seconds keep on ticking regardless of whether or not you want them.

Now, all that said; move on with whatever it is you enjoy doing, stop trying to argue that it doesn't exist or can be avoided, and go about your day as if it doesn't. In the vast majority of cases, it has no tangeable impact on your experience of the game, despite it always being there. However, when it comes to a discussion of gathering vs. buying mats for crafting, stop trying to pretend that things you gather are free. They simply aren't.

You do not have to a cost analysis on anything, that actually takes up time and one needs to think about if it is even worth doing that. Does it save time in the long run? It is not really hard, like say I am selling lots of things, so much so it is hard to keep up if I am purely crafting. When this happens I buy mats off the MH to keep up because not doing so is gil lost. On the other hand if it is slow I will start gathering materials starting one that sells for the most and work my way down till I get a sale. Anything that sells for less then 100 gil each is not worth gathering no matter the circumstance of how many sales I am getting. (crystals/ clusters is a different matter and I never farm "shards") Sometimes ill sell HQ results on the MB, if it is worth the slot on my retainer. If say I can make 50k profit in 30 seconds, why should I spend 10 mins crafting from raw to give some 320 item for 50k gil? knowing if your time is wasted or not has nothing to do with sitting down and a cost analysis nor has it anything to do with real life.

For "argument can't do B while doing A is a bit of a stretch" it isn't, everyone picks what is more important on x day, and there is nothing wrong with it. However recognizing that is still an opportunity cost is a different matter. I like to craft, I like to do it as much as I can. Even with that, I am not going to craft something that costs 40k to make and sell it for 50k, just because I can. It is not worth the time to do, and rather do something else. Has nothing to do with "take this game too seriously and treat it as a surrogate for real life. For me if I ever get to that point then it is time to quit as I've already done all of it in RL so why do it again. " I find the opposite to be the issue, too many not care enough about how they treat others because "it is just a game"

[Driavna]

Mindless undercutting is a blessing to make easy gil, so no, we need more of them out there!

[SuperZay]

I think its a free market and if Random Player # 4907 wants to sell the same fish as you for 1/10th the price, he has every right to do so. Is it stupid? Yep. Is it annoying? Yep. Is there anything likely to be done about it? Nope!

And no, I don't think extreme undercutting should get someone banned. What you consider 'extreme' might not be a big deal to them, and banning someone for posting an auction is just.. well its as dumb as the undercutting itself.

Massive undercutting was always more profitable to me than sitting for days on high price and undercutting by 1 gil (which leads to being undercut next hour and I don't have time to monitor it). I get more money from selling 5 items with 100k profit than 1 item with 300k profit. It's more about volume and what gets you more gil by the end of day. Sure it may look 'stupid' and 'dumb' to you, but gil capped crafter gets the last laugh.