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

[KageTokage]

If I sell something, I generally start at around what the last price it was sold at was unless there's a very clear lack of supply, in which I'll turn it up a bit to see if anyone's willing to bite.

If someone does undercut me in a small market, I'm more prone to just price matching them as opposed to undercutting them...unless they one gil undercut in which case it means war.

[TwistedTea]

Possibilities and profit are not the same thing. Sure, they could have made more gil by just buying the mats and selling the item at a higher price, but the person hasn't lost any gil by farming the mats themselves and selling at an arbitrary desired price.

Not making some theoretical currency you may or may not have made if you had done <x> =/= A loss of currency you currently have invested in some endeavor.

I get where you are coming from but to clarify I'm not referring to selling the finished product at a higher price.

For example if X is selling for 100k consistently,multiple times daily.

I bought the mats from other players for 50k and I sold my item at 100k as well, I'm making a 50k profit.

However, since I didn't spend that time farming/gathering items and instead did this for many items like X but with higher profit margins.

As opposed to someone, who spends hours farming/gathering themselves for a few items like X.

The person who farmed/gathered themselves has lost the time/opportunity to diversify into many/more lucrative markets.

Even though, my profit margins in terms of gil may be lower on individual items but collectively on multiple items, I'm fairly confident that I'd make more gil/hour.

[Zarabeth]

This again. People will always undercut. If someone wants to sell really fast they will do an extreme undercut (even though it's kinda dumb, imo). Some people just have no patience and don't want to be bothered watching for their item to sell.

[Kleeya]

Poor people aren't buying luxury items. High end crafted items are not "normal" items. You don't go buy a $3,000 suit if you deliver pizzas. The same as someone that barely plays not buying a 3-5 million gil glamour piece. Most people's most valuable possessions are things like housing plots, since those are useful for everyone, and those cost a massive range of prices. And that's why, even being such a massive investment, even "poor" people save up to get them, because they are useful and desirable to have no matter what. Usefulness is more important than price or value, and that is always relative to the buyer. Sometimes people get lucky and catch super cheap deals on things, just like in real life too, but that is always the exception and never the rule because that is simply not sustainable.

You seems to think that if you are poor and will never make enough money for that in your life, you dont want to buy luxury items at all, which its false. Someone who barely plays can very well still want this 3 millions glamour piece. Someone who deliver pizzas can very well want a 3000 dollars suit. But they can't because they dont have enough money for that, and never will. Now drop drastically your prices to 100 gils/100 euros so they can afford them right now, and what do you think will happen when they see that ? Do you really think they will not buy one for their personnal use ?

Each time i see someone complaining that they dont have money for this minion/mount/crafted item/etc at the market board, that's someone who would have buy it right away if the price was low enough so they can afford it. Thus speeding the sales instead of waiting days, even weeks, for a few selected rich ones to buy your items. You make less money per customer, but you sell more items, more often, to more people. And you are also making free space quicker for the next items to sell.

[Ksenia]

I've never looked at it the way you see it.


There are buyers markets and there are sellers markets. People are selling Lightning and Wind Clusters on Sarg for 2-5 Gil each. Undercut? I guess.. I bought 30,000 of each so far. It's under priced, it's a buyers market. If someone wants to flood the market with the other clusters I will buy them too. Why are they doing it? I don't care. Beats standing in Mor Dhona for 5 hrs getting them myself or trying to spreadsheet a hidden node rotation.

[Barraind]

Each time i see someone complaining that they dont have money for this minion/mount/crafted item/etc at the market board, that's someone who would have buy it right away if the price was low enough so they can afford it. Thus speeding the sales instead of waiting days, even weeks, for a few selected rich ones to buy your items

Just because someone says they would want to buy X doesnt mean they would actually buy X if you put it on sale for what they might be able to afford.

Items that are sold for significant amounts arent arbitrarily priced, they're based on the price of the mats required or general ignorance (I made a few million gil selling glasses that cost like 3k to make for 100k).

You wont be getting a sephirot tree for "cheap" ever, because fiend sap is the limiting factor. You wont be getting purple trees cheap. you wont be getting most glams that use map-spawned instance drops cheap (or not for several patches).

[Bright-Flower]

If so many people are willing to sell the item at so low of a price, there is an abundance of that item. It's just free market at play, happens at every game with an auction house, nothing strange about it. If there is an item with high demand you will make money with it. This can be seen with materia, the grade 8 materia sells really well but it has seen a natural reduction in prize as more people have gotten their hands on them from dungeons and what not.

Came to more or less say this. And some items that start off rare become more common over time.

When a new dungeon comes out as an example you'll often see the pet from it (if it has one) listed high but as more and more people start running the dungeon and the few people with tons of gil to throw at a pet get theirs, the price crashes down pretty quickly.

This happens at a slower pace with say high end crafted items. At first a few people can make them, and say high end raiders with a lot of gil are willing to pay for it. But that pool of players starts to shrink and the number of people with leveled and geared crafters increases.

On top of all that you have people who would rather get a quick buck rather than 'wait their turn' for an item to sell so they undercut, and then someone undercuts them etc. It's just supply and demand at work combined with people wanting their money. Be it because they want a quick buck or want a sale before the price goes down even further than it has already.

And sometimes the prices that are up are just not realistic in the first place and then someone sells the item at a more reasonable rate.

[SenorPatty]

"Ultimately"

L O L

Like some sinister cabal is rigging the entire marketplace to their whims, ensuring the rich and powerful stay wealthy while the slum dwellers remain poor, silencing any unfortunate soul that happen to have an inkling of their nefarious plans. I can just hear the cackling of the mastermind who is "ultimately" benefiting from the financial chaos as he/she pets their fat cat.

[DumdogsWorld]

"Ultimately"

L O L

Like some sinister cabal is rigging the entire marketplace to their whims, ensuring the rich and powerful stay wealthy while the slum dwellers remain poor, silencing any unfortunate soul that happen to have an inkling of their nefarious plans. I can just hear the cackling of the mastermind who is "ultimately" benefiting from the financial chaos as he/she pets their fat cat.

They must be planning to hold the market board ransom for one hundred billion gil.

[LexxyRaptor]

"Undercutting" "Who ultimately benefits from this?"

1. The buyer. For paying less.
2. Me, the aforementioned undercutter, for having the gil in my pockets from the sale. Instead of theoretical gil.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯