Extreme Market Board Undercutting is a Problem. Who ultimately benefits from this?

[SerLuke]

Asian RMT companies.

They would actually benefit from higher prices not lower, the lower item costs overall the fewer people buying gil.

[LineageRazor]

And when you drop the price of a high demand item, it creates a bubble, like I mentioned. Which is the thing everyone that has responded saying "lower prices sell faster" is forgetting. The price will rapidly crash and stock will deplete and demand will fall, then the price resets itself back to its original place. Sellers lose money or drop out of the market because their items suddenly become worthless. It ends up wasting time for everyone involved since then sellers start pulling items from the market to wait on the price to rise again. Keeping a steady, consistent price on an item is always the most sustainable way to sell, and undercutting by 1 is how you do it. It puts your items up first and also maintains the established price.

It's wasted the time of everyone trying to maintain the high price, certainly. But the undercutter? It's time very well spent. Their product has sold, and they have cash-in hand. They recognized that the market was due for a change.

Undercutting by 1 isn't undercutting at all. It's a cheap attempt to sell your product without actually bending to the market pressure. It works, certainly - up until the point where someone actually wants to guarantee a sale, and makes a MEANINGFUL undercut.

If the only way to sell your product is to undercut by 1, there's too much product. A more drastic undercut is not only okay, it's NEEDED. The price needs to move down to the range where folks will actually purchase it. Seventeen copies of a product at 800,000, 799,999, and 799,998 where maybe two have sold in the past week is not the sign of a healthy market. If I were to try to sell this item, I'd mark it at 700,000, or even lower. In the next week, mine would sell for certain, and maybe one lucky 799,998 would manage to sell, assuming folks didn't wise up and (Lower the price?).

[Alucard135]

Read above.

As I said, a simple googling would show otherwise. If someone said they're not making one, what prevents the others from doing so? It's funny how you ask others for proof of something that a lot know exist, but your only proof that it doesn't exist is a statement.

[Big_Bap]

As I said, a simple googling would show otherwise. If someone said they're not making one, what prevents the others from doing so? It's funny how you ask others for proof of something that a lot know exist, but your only proof that it doesn't exist is a statement.

Would show what exactly? Theres people wondering if it exist. People looking for one. People claiming such a thing exist.

I’ll say it again for the people in the back. The biggest botting platform for ffxiv has stated that they will not touch that pandora’s box and the same conclusion can be found on other automation platforms.

The truth is that it doesn’t exist. Prove me wrong.

[Melichoir]

At the end of the day, unless youre asking SE to implement a market control system (which will inevitably screw everything up), mass undercutters are just a part of the MB game. There shouldnt be to much debate about this. Yeah it sucks if someone drops the price and people chase the price drop but thats the way it is. You either follow suit or ride it out till it comes back up. As I said before, if the market average is stable, itll jump back up in a day or two at most. Blunt as I have to be, it does not matter if you like it or not - People are allowed to sell the items they get at any price they want despite your protests or own feelings on whether its great or not. Instead of worrying abotu what other people are doing, why dont we just worry about our own stuff and sell it at what we think is a fair price. If you think a price is way to low, put it up at a price you think is right and see where that goes. Simple as that.

[Alucard135]

Would show what exactly? Theres people wondering if it exist. People looking for one. People claiming such a thing exist.

I’ll say it again for the people in the back. The biggest botting platform for ffxiv has stated that they will not touch that pandora’s box and the same conclusion can be found on other automation platforms.

I'll say it again, just because the most famous one doesn't have it, that doesn't mean there are none out there. You forgot to mention in your search that there are some offering one. The reason the biggest botting one doesn't have it, is the same reason why a certain website for the market board no longer offers free updates to the prices but offers it for their patreons.

The truth is that it doesn’t exist. Prove me wrong.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[hiedra]

There is an omnicrafter from another server that started selling their stuff on my server (using an alt). They undercut the items by so much that it's no longer profitable to sell them because of the value of the mats themselves. Being a crafter myself, I've learned to adapt over the years so it's whatever, but it does make me question why this person is choosing to sell items at a loss.

[Callinon]

Trust me, it does, and it's a little silly to think it doesn't when it happens in virtually every MMO on the market. They have bots that can run through the entire MSQ without use of hacks, so making one that simply undercuts people at fixed intervals would comparatively be a joke.

While I have no doubt something like this COULD be done (because any action taken by a human in-game can be automated), the research I've done on the subject suggests it isn't anywhere near as widespread as people seem to believe it is.

People (not you specifically) seem to blame botting for every ridiculous market board fluctuation in the game. But the people on botting forums actually talking about bots and scripting aren't really having it. Their position, which makes all the sense in the world by the way, is that widespread use of market board undercutting bots would be SUPER easy to detect and would almost certainly just result in bans. There are definitely bots that will post items on the MB at undercut prices (though not drastic undercuts) and there are bots that will farm and then post their haul on a regular cycle. These absolutely exist. But as far as bots that monitor MB prices and auto-undercut? No. Precisely because two of them on the same server (and it would only take two) would be absurdly easy to spot for even rudimentary detection methods.

Y'know what's the far more likely explanation for the ridiculous undercutting we're seeing? People are stupid.

I've seen items that sell regularly for 200k suddenly be listed for 30k because they didn't sell in eight and a half minutes and the seller's blood sugar was spiking just then. A lot of people simply don't understand that high-value items take longer to sell. And it doesn't take a whole lot of these people to completely tank the market value for an item just because they want theirs to sell nownownow and aren't willing to wait for the natural sales cycle for a high-value item to take care of that.

[Alucard135]

the research I've done on the subject suggests it isn't anywhere near as widespread as people seem to believe it is.

Exactly, it isn't. SE would take action against the bots otherwise. Just like how they kept banning the ones that were used to update market board prices when everyone started using a certain website. Now that website only offers such service to a few that paid for it.

[Lacan]

but... undercutting stuff gets it sold quicker! that's what I always do. :v If you match the price you're gonna be waiting till after the others sell before yours does. I want gil now.