Undercutting bots are getting out of control!

[Frizze]

I undercut by 1 gil multiple times a day, even then sometimes just after I'm undercut in the same way. It may be bots or a very dedicated player, but I suspect bots for this do exist. We get bots for most things, even for treasure maps themselves, so I do believe some items may be affected by undercutting bots. I don't know what we can do about them, so I keep undercutting anyway.


I always undercut by 1 gil, because I don't want to destroy the market and margins for that item... to me is far worse when someone undercuts by a large margin. Someone will undercut them in turn, and they will lower their price even more. I was selling an emote yesterday. It was 800.000 gil. Some mild undercutting was happening, until someone lowered their price to 700.000. Next time I saw it it was 580.000... There, market destroyed. (said emote was consistently selling for around 800k).


Since undercutting is inevitable, if everyone undercut by 1 gil the market would be so much better! The goal is only to get the first listing anyway...

Personally i never buy from the guy who undercuts by 1 gil. Price match, offer me an actual lower price, or GTFO. And all the undercutting you describe here seems pointless. If the emote is selling "consistently" at 800k, list yours at 800k and in a day or two itll sell after the other guys are bought out for much less then they could have made. Consistently implies that it sells at a predictably good frequency. If you instead meant that it rarely sells but you have recently been able to get 800k for it, that probly means its overpriced. If thats the case, you may need to embrace a lower pricepoint.

[Kes13a]

Edited:

11retainer got baited by insane low price and undercut each other 24/7 at a perfectly 10min interval is not evidence to you guys.
fine.

I used to think ffxiv has a great community,
but then now I realize this community will try everything they could to passively protect these bots, for some reason.

I played 12hours yesterday and was selling 60 pieces of gears, manually updating my price every hour,
yet nothing sells, because of these undercut bots, because there is 10+ bot undercutting me automatically

but all of you would just keep passively defending them by saving "there is no proof" "just give up"
it is disgusting.

who defends the bots? seriously, if you look in the market and retainers section, there are a lot of people against the bots. its a known issue. dont blame the general game community for the cheaters, the blame lies with the people that support RMT. we have a discord that has people that regularily report the known bots.

undercutting by a gil repeatedly is an mmo thing as much as its a rl thing. dont stress over that.

The market bots, well, unless SE decides to do something, all you can do is keep reporting

[Kes13a]

I don't undercut people like that normally,

only after I suspected them because I played 12hours yesterday,
and undercut by 1gil every 1hour and was selling 40 exarchic gear,
still I sold nothing, then I realize something is off and started testing them.

now I am just seeing a bunch of bots undercutting each other below 50k

you want to sell exarchic gear, as someone who sold a lot... its a job.
changing your price every hour.. thats why you never sold anything. when I was working the boards, I stood on them for 8 hours a day, bot changed its price, I changed, and not by 1 gil, was typically in 5k to 10k increments
and I sold things. many things. changing prices every hour and by 1 gil, doesnt differentiate you and there are 59 other minutes where you can be undersold.

quick lesson. bots have a floor. find that floor, its not hard. real people will go below that, and undercut you by a gil all the way down.
actual bots will not drop below their floor.

basically, I stopped selling, because the effort wasnt worth my sanity. next expansion likely be back at it, but for now, enjoying other things
if working the markets (and it is work) is affecting you this much, I suggest a break from the market
bots are frustrating. so are people. but if it is affecting, join the other thread, join the discord, we have a spreadsheet of the knowns that people find.
above all, take a breath and relax

[Starshower]

Personally i never buy from the guy who undercuts by 1 gil. Price match, offer me an actual lower price, or GTFO. And all the undercutting you describe here seems pointless. If the emote is selling "consistently" at 800k, list yours at 800k and in a day or two itll sell after the other guys are bought out for much less then they could have made. Consistently implies that it sells at a predictably good frequency. If you instead meant that it rarely sells but you have recently been able to get 800k for it, that probly means its overpriced. If thats the case, you may need to embrace a lower pricepoint.

By consistently I meant 3 times or so every day. And I notice a lot of times people buy the listing above mine. That's OK. I'll continue to undercut by 1 gil... If I matched prices there would be an equal chance my listing wouldn't be the one bought. I just dont undercut when the price falls to much. Like that time the price dropped to 580k. I didn't undercut that crazy undercutter because I didn't want to destroy the market. I'd rather wait for his listing to sell and let mine be sold for a higher price.

[GrizzlyTank]

What this game could need is buy orders.

Make it so that players can "order" items on the market-board so that if someone tries to sell an item they have to sell it to the highest buy order.

This way no one should be able to tank the price of items as easily.

[Vahlnir]

What this game could need is buy orders.

Make it so that players can "order" items on the market-board so that if someone tries to sell an item they have to sell it to the highest buy order.

This way no one should be able to tank the price of items as easily.

A free market is better, in my opinion. If this was an option alongside this "order" system then yeah, sure, but as things are it's fine even if some players are...much less intelligent than most when it comes to making a profit by undercutting to heck and back. What isn't fine though is the bots who have hijacked certain markets.

[Starshower]

A free market is better, in my opinion. If this was an option alongside this "order" system then yeah, sure, but as things are it's fine even if some players are...much less intelligent than most when it comes to making a profit by undercutting to heck and back. What isn't fine though is the bots who have hijacked certain markets.

I happen to really like you in these forums, so I won't be offended if you were calling me dumb in this respect, but how am I to do better then? If I'm not undercutting to get my items to sell what should I be doing? Putting a price and waiting one week to see if my items sold? what If I want to sell a large volume of items and don't have enough retainer space to sell it all in this way?

[Vahlnir]

I happen to really like you in these forums, so I won't be offended if you were calling me dumb in this respect, but how am I to do better then? If I'm not undercutting to get my items to sell what should I be doing? Putting a price and waiting one week to see if my items sold? what If I want to sell a large volume of items and don't have enough retainer space to sell it all in this way?

Oh no, I wasn't really calling anyone dumb per say, they just lack the market know-how which was more or less what I meant. I suppose I should have said that a lot of players aren't smart when it comes to the MB. I didn't mean to call anyone dumb, so I apologize. There's also a difference between undercutting by 10-20 or up to a few hundred gil and undercutting to extremes. It's when players get into the thousands/tens of thousands where markets begin to crash. Personally, I will list a bunch of things and leave them be for a week or so, sometimes longer. This is when I have 5-6 retainers full of items to sell. Maybe more if I've been busy and my retainers have been kind. If they haven't sold by then (more often than not they don't, as I've been undercut a dozen times at least between the time I list my stuff and when I go to adjust the prices) I will usually go half off on everything if not more as sort of a "clearance" sale. Everything must go! There's nothing wrong with getting rid of your stock to make room for more things to sell. Players just...tend to take a high selling item and tank the price within a day. To me, that is not being smart. It is being greedy and not maximizing one's profits. That is what I and most other people have an issue with. All I can really suggest is not contributing to the undercut wars if you can, at least not bad enough to tank the price, but sometimes you simply have to ride the wave before it crashes.

[GrizzlyTank]

Free market... This market is more obtuse than free. Need 3 of something? Either buy 3 for 10k or 99 for 300 leaving the item both under and over-priced simultaneously simply because you can't get a custom amount.

The entire market system in this game... sucks.

[Starshower]

Oh no, I wasn't really calling anyone dumb per say, they just lack the market know-how which was more or less what I meant. I suppose I should have said that a lot of players aren't smart when it comes to the MB. I didn't mean to call anyone dumb, so I apologize. There's also a difference between undercutting by 10-20 or up to a few hundred gil and undercutting to extremes. It's when players get into the thousands/tens of thousands where markets begin to crash. Personally, I will list a bunch of things and leave them be for a week or so, sometimes longer. This is when I have 5-6 retainers full of items to sell. Maybe more if I've been busy and my retainers have been kind. If they haven't sold by then (more often than not they don't, as I've been undercut a dozen times at least between the time I list my stuff and when I go to adjust the prices) I will usually go half off on everything if not more as sort of a "clearance" sale. Everything must go! There's nothing wrong with getting rid of your stock to make room for more things to sell. Players just...tend to take a high selling item and tank the price within a day. To me, that is not being smart. It is being greedy and not maximizing one's profits. That is what I and most other people have an issue with. All I can really suggest is not contributing to the undercut wars if you can, at least not bad enough to tank the price, but sometimes you simply have to ride the wave before it crashes.

Yeah, that's basically how I feel... The last thing I want is to crash the market... When I see there is someone that undercuts by a lot on the item I'm selling I stop and let them sell theirs first. And I usually only update prices 2 or 3 times a day.