How do you deal with constant undercutting?

[CainCrimson]

undercutting isnt going to go anywhere and your not forced to follow along with the undercutter, point of fact is you should just let it sell as not getting that one sale isnt a big deal unless someone keeps posting new items cheaper than yours everytime they sell one.

back in ARR gil was harder to get and people had less need to undercut so drastically so the market stayed for the most part more stable, nowadays gil is everywhere and even the poor have 20mil+...

I've currently got $500,000, which by that standard would make me the lowest of the low lol....

[Driskus]

Sometimes it's an aggressive "get off my market" tactic. He wants you to see that if you undercut him, he'll drive the market into the ground, thus hoping you'll give it up in disgust as unprofitable and move to a different market.

I did that once, but as a counter to someone who was camping their retainers and undercutting me all day long within minutes, sometimes even seconds after I would post something. Our retainers were in different regions, so it was really unnecessary. Luckily, it was gear he was doing it on, so I looked at the signature on the tooltip. Did a little research on the MB and I noticed that same character was buying large amounts of the materials needed to craft said gear. I was gathering mine, so my cost was basically zero. I crashed the market to the point where it would be unprofitable for him to keep up, and within a day, the constant camping and undercuts stopped. I bought him out and jacked the price back up to normal and never had issues after that. He was still listing, but wasn't undercutting constantly anymore.

[Nixxe]

I was gathering mine, so my cost was basically zero.

Time is intrinsically valuable. Your cost is not zero just because you gathered it. You lost out on whatever gil you could have spent that time making.

[Shadygrove]

Time is intrinsically valuable. Your cost is not zero just because you gathered it. You lost out on whatever gil you could have spent that time making.

That's opportunity costs. I don't think Drikus cares about opportunity costs.

[Nixxe]

That's opportunity costs. I don't think Drikus cares about opportunity costs.

Whether he cares about them or not is immaterial.

[Caitlinzulu]

Whether he cares about them or not is immaterial.

Loss of potential profit is not the same as cost.

[Remyogic]

Whether he cares about them or not is immaterial.

It actually is very relevant. The value of the lost time is Subjective to how Driskus chooses to spend their time and what value THEY place on that time. If Driskus, sees their time gathering mats as "free time", then the value of said time is "basically zero" as they stated.

Yes, time has value, but the value of said time is inherently subjective to the individual. i.e. The value of the fry guy at McDonald's time is not the same as the value of the time of the best Cardiac Surgeon in the world..........

[Remyogic]

On topic:

I gather my own mats, either myself or via retainer, and craft all my own pre-crafts. So I don't mind the undercutters, it is very rare that they can afford to go as low as I can.

Most heavy undercutters are relying on volume sales to make their gil and to achieve that they almost always need to be buying mats and pre-crafts. There is a certain point they will not be willing to cross.

[Lunafreiya]

I usually just give it a few days and if it doesn't sell just check price and adjust if needed

[ch4rliehorse]

If I see MB listings like:

119,996gil
119,997gil
119,998gil
119,999gil
120,000gil

I'll probably buy the one at 120k (assuming there's not another one above it at 120,001 gil). I try to take another couple seconds to see if the top of the list item is only a few gil less than something further down. I almost always make it a point to buy an item a little further down, provided it's only 1-10 gil more. I know just me doing this doesn't really make any difference, but I do it to occasionally give sales to the people who don't have the time (or better yet, don't consider it worth the time) to sit by their retainer bell and get an e-rection every 2 minutes when they undercut someone.

I get that it's one of those "If everyone could just do _____, the world would be a better place" scenarios and it's not a reasonable solution for the same reason that if someone accidentally early-pulls an S rank and several people yell to reset it, the whole swarm of people wanting to get their credit will just burn it to the ground anyway. But I can't help but wonder...if enough people bought things that way, could it possibly lead to the people who 1gil undercut every minute getting confused as to what actually sells and maybe even deciding it's not worth remaining retainer bell-vigilant every minute of their day to get things sold.

I don't mind undercutting, it's part of the system and it's obviously going to happen - I do it plenty. But specifically the MB ninjas who relist every couple minutes make it really hard to sell things sometimes - and a lot of times those are the same people who are so used to winning MB struggles since they're always on, that they get really butthurt when someone starts relisting anywhere close to as often as them, and decide to tank the market. That needs to be addressed. In my small, insignificant way I try to do that by spending 5-10 more gil here and there. But honestly would a relist timer be a good idea or a bad one? Like some sort of "Heyyy we see you've relisted that same item 2 times in the last hour - time to chill for an hour (no idea how it'd work, just an example). Seems like anytime someone has a good idea, there are 1,000 repercussions they haven't thought about that actually end up making the system worse somehow - therefore I'm asking rather than saying (saying your opinion usually ends up with someone yelling at your "dumbness" in a reply, whereas asking lets them instead share their wealth of knowledge with you and everyone else.) But I think with enough thought something like that could be put in place and it would at least help alleviate that issue without creating too many new ones.