UNDERCUTTING....

[Fear]

Not really, if people don't have the time to compete and constantly change prices for a better deal theres nothing wrong with them undercutting so that when they do have time to play they can enjoy it.

[wolfsspirit]

who cares.. as long as i get rid of that crap on my retainer and the fastest and easyest way to do it is undercut by 50% or more.
If it ain't gone in a day .. then its too expensive.
Few gonna spend those rediculous prices some ask for an item , especialy when it's a lower level item you only use for a day or 2 untill you leveled up, and replace it with something higher.

[Elexia]

who cares.. as long as i get rid of that crap on my retainer and the fastest and easyest way to do it is undercut by 50% or more.
If it ain't gone in a day .. then its too expensive.
Few gonna spend those rediculous prices some ask for an item , especialy when it's a lower level item you only use for a day or 2 untill you leveled up, and replace it with something higher.

Yeah, sucks for people actually trying to make gil. Even doing leves isn't a good source of gil anymore as they adjusted it (and barring the 100,000 leve history achievement one.) Some people actually gather and craft to...buy thing. Shocking I know. So while you don't care (which I guess is the mentality of a lot of people who play this game) others do it and it is quite annoying being undercut by a very large margin.

If you want to "just get rid of stuff" you do know there's literally hundreds of NPCs you can sell it to, right? Nothing is "too expensive" beyond the new materia which people seriously believe someone will buy for 1-4 mil for almost no upgrade in performance lol.

You clearly have no idea what the term free market means. Just because something is expensive, doesn't mean it is unaffected by free market principles (such as: luxury goods, equilibrium pricing, etc.).

Actually I do, and people obviously know the worth of some items that it's pretty much unaffected by a "free market" since prices for certain things, as exampled tier IV materia generally stay in the 100-500k range. If they're trying to compete with each other, don't you think people would drop it even lower rather than having basically a set price range for it? It's hard to compete when you're selling at the same price as your competition >.>

Since isn't a free market basically an unrestricted economy? You'd think people would be more likely to undercut certain luxury items atm (Lightning Brands and Tier IV INT/Lightning materia are basically luxury now.)

[WinnipegJet]

Yeah, sucks for people actually trying to make gil. Even doing leves isn't a good source of gil anymore as they adjusted it (and barring the 100,000 leve history achievement one.) Some people actually gather and craft to...buy thing. Shocking I know. So while you don't care (which I guess is the mentality of a lot of people who play this game) others do it and it is quite annoying being undercut by a very large margin.

If you want to "just get rid of stuff" you do know there's literally hundreds of NPCs you can sell it to, right? Nothing is "too expensive" beyond the new materia which people seriously believe someone will buy for 1-4 mil for almost no upgrade in performance lol.



Actually I do, and people obviously know the worth of some items that it's pretty much unaffected by a "free market" since prices for certain things, as exampled tier IV materia generally stay in the 100-500k range. If they're trying to compete with each other, don't you think people would drop it even lower rather than having basically a set price range for it? It's hard to compete when you're selling at the same price as your competition >.>

Since isn't a free market basically an unrestricted economy? You'd think people would be more likely to undercut certain luxury items atm (Lightning Brands and Tier IV INT/Lightning materia are basically luxury now.)

100k-500k is an "undercut" price. Think about how much these items cost when they debut (and subsequently how much they have fallen). Equilibrium pricing is a function of time, competing goods, and general inflation- Tier IV materia might stabilize around this range for the foreseeable future (equilibrium- supply and demand) until something better comes out (competing goods; price reduction- maturity and decline). The price may also wave with the cost of items on a whole (inflation/deflation). Look at how an item in XI changed in price (NOT value) from 2006 to the present. Or, for a real world example, consider the value of currency in Zimbabwe- I recently acquired a 100 trillion dollar bill for $5 on ebay (paying for the novelty)... the actual worth of which is about 2 cents. Back in 2005 a bus ride on Zimbabwe's public transport cost about 50 billion dollars.

A free market is in theory an unrestricted economy yes... the "invisible hand" guides it first and foremost. But in 99.9% of cases there will be some macro level controls that affect pricing. It's difficult to say for certain, but we probably won't see a dramatic shift in the pricing of these items until something superior comes out. Keep in mind, the principle of undercutting is based on the tradeoff of earning less revenue for a quicker sale. Such is why you see people undercut by 1 gil, 100 gil, 1000 gil, or whatever. People will not undercut an item to the point where it's undervalued because the free market will correct this.

[Kiara]

A free market is in theory an unrestricted economy yes... the "invisible hand" guides it first and foremost. But in 99.9% of cases there will be some macro level controls that affect pricing. It's difficult to say for certain, but we probably won't see a dramatic shift in the pricing of these items until something superior comes out. Keep in mind, the principle of undercutting is based on the tradeoff of earning less revenue for a quicker sale. Such is why you see people undercut by 1 gil, 100 gil, 1000 gil, or whatever. People will not undercut an item to the point where it's undervalued because the free market will correct this.

Hi Onion,

Great points. But I would say there are reasons we have the SEC and laws for Anti-Trust / Monopolies / Price Dumping, etc.

With the crappy way Price Listings are displayed right now (Top 20 Cheapest only), an RMT Corporation can easily load up 1 Char (with 2 Retainers) and price dump an item to control that market. They have an army of RMT / Bots at their disposal to price dump at super low prices and drive away real Crafters & Gatherers, and then control prices then.

Square has no one monitoring or regulating the markets. There are no Anti-Trust / Price-Dumping Protection schemes in place.

Overall I think there are a few different things being discussed here. Individual players wanting to get rid of their items or sell faster... sure they can undercut each other by various amounts and wage their little "price wars"... and then there are RMT Corporations / Bots / People with a lot of resources / multiple retainers on their hands that want to Price Dump / Control Markets. That's a bigger issue IMHO.

It's a pretty low activity game right now... but I wonder how much worse it might get once 2.0 hits?

[WinnipegJet]

Hi Onion,

Great points. But I would say there are reasons we have the SEC and laws for Anti-Trust / Monopolies / Price Dumping, etc.

With the crappy way Price Listings are displayed right now (Top 20 Cheapest only), an RMT Corporation can easily load up 1 Char (with 2 Retainers) and price dump an item to control that market. They have an army of RMT / Bots at their disposal to price dump at super low prices and drive away real Crafters & Gatherers, and then control prices then.

Square has no one monitoring or regulating the markets. There are no Anti-Trust / Price-Dumping Protection schemes in place.

Overall I think there are a few different things being discussed here. Individual players wanting to get rid of their items or sell faster... sure they can undercut each other by various amounts and wage their little "price wars"... and then there are RMT Corporations / Bots / People with a lot of resources / multiple retainers on their hands that want to Price Dump / Control Markets. That's a bigger issue IMHO.

It's a pretty low activity game right now... but I wonder how much worse it might get once 2.0 hits?

Hi! Thanks for your input. I'll respond in order of your points.

RMTs can control prices using the methods you described to an extent, but items still have inherent value. If they try to inflate the price of a Tier IV materia for some reason, people are likely to notice that the item is disproportionately priced with respect to other similar materia or items. I guess it goes back to how covert this manipulation is-- 10k will probably not be noticed, but 100k likely will and subsequently adjusted for.

There is no price regulation for sure. The closest thing to this is NPC prices for items that can be used as a benchmark/estimate for how much the market will be charging... but again, even these prices appear to have been arbitrarily selected, with no real account for actual supply/demand dynamics. As far as anti-inflation measures, there are only two basic tactics that SE used in XI and is likely to employ in XIV: gil sinks (such as the repair NPC), and gil seizures (banning of RMT accounts that horde gil). I guess the bottom line here is that we'll probably never see any sophisticated price controls/regulations put into place. This is an MMO after all; I don't think SE has budgeted to hire an economist to manage the XIV economies.

In terms of activity, an economy can't function as a market if there aren't enough buyers and sellers. This is a really complicated problem that I'm too lazy, and honestly, probably not knowledgeable enough to speak to. All I'll say is that with more people there are more transactions and a greater likelihood of normal market behaviours.

[Themule]

I don't understand how people talk about a Free Market like it should actually exist in MMO's. A free market would tell me that if I can find a bot to do what other players spend hours doing, its the other people who are the suckers. If SE wanted a free market, they would allow 3rd party programs and tell people who can't code or purchase their own bot to suck it. We want a controlled economy that encourages people to do the work instead of cheating. I don't care what your real life opinion is on Economics, this is not the real world. We want people to actually enjoy doing work enough to pay a monthly fee and in turn help this game survive.

[Wolfie]

I don't understand how people talk about a Free Market like it should actually exist in MMO's. A free market would tell me that if I can find a bot to do what other players spend hours doing, its the other people who are the suckers. If SE wanted a free market, they would allow 3rd party programs and tell people who can't code or purchase their own bot to suck it. We want a controlled economy that encourages people to do the work instead of cheating. I don't care what your real life opinion is on Economics, this is not the real world. We want people to actually enjoy doing work enough to pay a monthly fee and in turn help this game survive.

If SE wanted us to "do the work instead of cheating", then they would disable all inter-player trading, and all currency and purchases would be done via NPC interaction. The moment you allow players to trade or interact with each other, they're going to find a way to "exploit" the trading system to get the highest benefit. That is a tenet of how any economy works, whether its real life or virtual.

The reason why bots are banned is simply because SE is not okay with the idea that players can automate their gameplay. There are some MMOs that allow it, some that have come up with ingenious ways to thwart it, and some that opt to simply ban them. But banning bots does not make the rest of the economy any less of a free market.

And finally, if you think that virtual economies don't have parallels to real world economies, then you my friend are extremely uneducated. People write their Ph.D. theses on virtual economies, and the same laws and phenomena that happen in real world economies also happen in virtual economies.

[Rydin]

I don't understand how people talk about a Free Market like it should actually exist in MMO's. A free market would tell me that if I can find a bot to do what other players spend hours doing, its the other people who are the suckers. If SE wanted a free market, they would allow 3rd party programs and tell people who can't code or purchase their own bot to suck it. We want a controlled economy that encourages people to do the work instead of cheating. I don't care what your real life opinion is on Economics, this is not the real world. We want people to actually enjoy doing work enough to pay a monthly fee and in turn help this game survive.

It's not some easy issue though.
Blizzard had to hire real world economists to come in and fix the WoW economy
And even then, even amongst economists you'll have a hard time finding ones that agree.
Economy in general is such a vast and diverse subject with so many "professional" opinions that at the end of the day, most MMO makers decide to just let the market work itself out

[DarthTaru]

I don't understand how people talk about a Free Market like it should actually exist in MMO's. A free market would tell me that if I can find a bot to do what other players spend hours doing, its the other people who are the suckers. If SE wanted a free market, they would allow 3rd party programs and tell people who can't code or purchase their own bot to suck it. We want a controlled economy that encourages people to do the work instead of cheating. I don't care what your real life opinion is on Economics, this is not the real world. We want people to actually enjoy doing work enough to pay a monthly fee and in turn help this game survive.

Of all the ridiculous posts in this thread, this one is by far filled with the most fail.
Yes.... we.... can....