Market feels broken. I'm curious why -- and does this diminish crafting?

[Kes13a]

Not when you see 20+ listings of 99 stacks though.

DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

[Jojoya]

DrWho2010 seems to gloss over the fact that bots are now doing map parties

We've always seen a big price drop with the release of a new major patch and a new map crafting material. That's nothing new. The old material will start dropping outside of the dungeon, increasing supply at the same time demand for the material falls off.

What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

[Chaletamale]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

[Denzyl]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

Not quite true, on a couple of occasions I have noticed Sell Orders where the price was so low, it was a lot less than selling the item direct to the nearest Vendor.

On the last one I saw I made 370 Gil profit buying them up and selling them to the Vendor

As for Retainer returns spoiling Crafting, across my Characters I have 7 Retainers who Quick Venture for me.

In the last week alone I have had 5 'Stuffed Alphas', 4 'Cannonballs' & 3 'Nameday Cakes'

[Jojoya]

My favorite are the people that undercut infinitely until theres no price left and theres no purpose in even selling the item anymore because theres no profit to be made. Thats literally what this game has become now. Constantly finding a new item before some idiots undercut it to death and drop it to 1-10 gil so that noone can make any money anymore.

This game has literally handled its economy worse than any game ive ever seen. Even pay2win games with cash shop items being vended arnt this bad. Making money is extremely difficult unless you find a niche that pays. And even then theres no guarantee how long that niche will last before some buffoon catches on and crashes the price so neither of you can make any profit.

At this point, the only resolution I can see is drastically increasing the price that NPCs buy loot for. Lvl 80 armors should easily be worth at least 10k-20k each, but instead were getting jipped to force us to rely on a crappy crafting system thats entirely broken

If the listings are remaining on the MB long enough for an undercut war to drop the price close to 0, it's not the undercutting that's the problem. It's the supply on the MB compared to the demand. Items that have demand equal to or greater than the supply don't last long enough on the MB for undercutting to become a problem.

When the supply is that much higher than the demand, it's usually not worth listing the item unless you don't have anything else to list.

Increasing the sell to vendor value would be a mistake because that's one of the way RMT fuels itself - vendor off things that won't sell on the MB. SE has already chopped vendor value on a lot of items to combat that.

[Prrringles]

... What's new is seeing the old crafting material suddenly showing up in stacks of 99. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before 5.3 and it didn't start becoming common until 5.4. That part definitely can be attributed to the bot map parties. Player parties aren't organized enough and don't last long enough to generate that much for a single player, and no player is going to wait for weeks to accumulate a stack before selling.

Same is fairly recently happening on the EU servers. Stacks of 50/99 calf leather and even stacks of 50+ frontier cloth. Always the same retainers and always at a "low" price. Funny thing is that they always get posted around the same time every day. For example, around 6AM and 7PM listings of large stacks of calf leather and frontier cloth are posted for cheap. People are even "camping" the MB for those listings so they can buy it out.

Oh and the same goes for maps. They always get bought by a lvl 19 mule characted around the same time every day. Talking 50+ maps here btw. It's sad really.

[KageTokage]

The script for map botting seems to have gone public sometime in the past few months, which probably explains why it's blown up so badly all of a sudden across the game as a whole.

There initially was only a single group on my server with sporadic periods of activity, but it wasn't long after they became consistent and constantly farming maps that I started seeing them springing up all over the DC.

I've seen five different groups just on my server alone and it's honestly kind of pathetic that SE seems just as inept at dealing with them as any other bot when their activity is even MORE obvious then the sorts we've been dealing with previously. Seeing an entire group of players moving and acting in near perfect unison is a painfully obvious indicator of scripted activity.

[Dzian]

Too much stuff is given for free... retainer balance is a mess, so yeah... no one gonna buy that 500 Fountains, sadly...

This is a big factor of it. Things like bozjan lockbox
or horde sacks from deep dungeons for example have absolutely killed the value of alot of things to the point where more expensive to make than buy.

You can often see how bad the problem is just looking at things like deep dungeons. And the way everyone totally ignores the horde sacks and just goes straight to the next floor because the contents of those sacks are ultimately worthless once the content is more than 10 minutes old. Because the markets become flooded that quickly.

I remember back in potent got 2 edda minions used one sold the other for 10 million. Honestly didn't expect anyone to buy it but they did. Got another one the next day and it was already worth less than 5k.

[Kuroka]

Yes it hurts... why ffs why get crafted primal weapons trashed so fast... like Sephirot is like what? 200 gil? lol Its ok the fight is easy to farm but holy do you really gotta give finished weapons for free? I recall what fun it was to sell ramuh, ravana etc back then... *sight*

It wasnt even just bc of the gil... the feeling, to know ive made smt special for someone which he cherishes... like that ppl that saved ages for high allagan or dragongod gear....

[Jojoya]

Yes it hurts... why ffs why get crafted primal weapons trashed so fast... like Sephirot is like what? 200 gil? lol Its ok the fight is easy to farm but holy do you really gotta give finished weapons for free? I recall what fun it was to sell ramuh, ravana etc back then... *sight*

It wasnt even just bc of the gil... the feeling, to know ive made smt special for someone which he cherishes... like that ppl that saved ages for high allagan or dragongod gear....

Because inventory and glamour dresser space are limited. Only those who plan to use the weapon for glamour are going to buy while the materials to craft are so readily available eager sellers flood the market trying to profit off the hot new thing.

If the glamour system worked more like WoW's transmog, prices would stay high because collecting a glamour wouldn't take up space. There would be a lot more buyers fighting over the supply.