Undercutting

[MilkieTea]

I don't know where to begin with this.

Buyers want to buy at the lowest available price. If someone is willing to sell an item at a price lower than the price at which you are will to sell that same item, that someone does not have any obligation whatsoever to raise their price closer to yours. Either you lower your price, or you wait until the market clears all the sellers willing to sell for less than you.

Because, unlike the real world, your character doesn't need things like food, shelter, or clothing and doesn't want things like entertainment, sale prices are largely valuations of time (to farm a thing, craft a thing, roll for rare things, etc.). Different people value time and gil differently, which is why the clearing price for an item (say lvl 90 group maps) can vary significantly over time as different people with different values post.

That's called a market.

The rest of the post exists.

Who made you the market czar? If someone wants to buy up everything they can worth over a million gil and sell it all for 1 gil a piece because it makes them happy? Great!

And if they want to undercut your prices, sell their item extremely quick and put more stuff up for sale in the now freed slots? Awesome!

Just because it isn't how /you/ want someone to play the game doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just wrong for /you/.

as above.

[Rhysati]

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

Who made you the market czar? If someone wants to buy up everything they can worth over a million gil and sell it all for 1 gil a piece because it makes them happy? Great!

And if they want to undercut your prices, sell their item extremely quick and put more stuff up for sale in the now freed slots? Awesome!

Just because it isn't how /you/ want someone to play the game doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just wrong for /you/.

[Eriane_Elis]

Who made you the market czar? If someone wants to buy up everything they can worth over a million gil and sell it all for 1 gil a piece because it makes them happy? Great!

And if they want to undercut your prices, sell their item extremely quick and put more stuff up for sale in the now freed slots? Awesome!

Just because it isn't how /you/ want someone to play the game doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just wrong for /you/.

The problem with your logic is that by the time people area ready to buy the stacks of whatever you bought for 600gil to sell at 4000gil, the original seller will have already gathered another few stacks to sell at an abnormally low price. No one knows if they've been gathering non-stop the whole time or if they're just bots. People are free to do whatever they want in the market but it doesn't make it any more interesting if they screw it up for everyone. It's essentially market griefing and while not against the rules per-se unless they use bots to do it, it's still a pain in the arse to deal with. There are quite literally people fine making a 40k gil profit when they could be making 700k gil profit instead. But they chose to grief the market and keep griefing because for some reason in their mind, it's a reasonable price and they would feel guilty selling it anything higher. They don't realize that by doing this, they are upsetting people who are working their butt off to hand-craft or gather these things and consider the actual cost of everything involved up to that point. If they feel guilty for "overcharging" then they should also feel guilty for upsetting the market.

[KitKatnip]

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

if something is selling at 80k gil (and i mean selling, not sitting there), either price at 80k or 79,999. you make more money, the market doesn’t tank, everyone wins. people will ALMOST always buy the first one on the list anyways, regardless of if its insanely cheap or priced right at market value. you simply shoot yourself in the foot, as well as everyone else.

You are missing out on an opportunity. If something is on the market for around 60k and there is one outlier at 30k, that is not tanking the market. That is your golden opportunity to buy the outlier and flip it to sell at the higher price.

[Faafetai]

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

if something is selling at 80k gil (and i mean selling, not sitting there), either price at 80k or 79,999. you make more money, the market doesn’t tank, everyone wins. people will ALMOST always buy the first one on the list anyways, regardless of if its insanely cheap or priced right at market value. you simply shoot yourself in the foot, as well as everyone else.

I have seen something selling for a moderate amount like 2000 drop to 70gil and it makes me fiesty, but I just get fed up and sell into different markets at that point. It was way worse when I would spend a few hours on collecting a mat at lower level that wasn't on the market at all than I get undercut by a lot. Though I do not have the best of luck so say farming for Archaeornis Skin in heavensward when in heavensward expansion getting barely any and trying to make a small amount of gil is just depressing. I usually factor in how much time it took to get the stuffs, make it, sell it and usually sell it for whatever price is the lowest depending on how many of that item is for sale. You can get away with selling things at the same price and still make bank on it so might as well not undercut. Though what you have said reminds me of all of those times I sell something for months than little Timmy comes in selling a million slots with his 12 retainers for 1 gil tanking the market entirely. I just wonder why, I have never sold something for 1gil but wouldn't the tax make you get nothing in return, it would be better to just sell it to an npc at that point.

[Floortank]

undercutting by 1 gil is fine

tanking the market because you think itll sell ‘faster’ isn’t.

if something is selling at 80k gil (and i mean selling, not sitting there), either price at 80k or 79,999. you make more money, the market doesn’t tank, everyone wins. people will ALMOST always buy the first one on the list anyways, regardless of if its insanely cheap or priced right at market value. you simply shoot yourself in the foot, as well as everyone else.

That's not how markets work. Valuation is whatever people are willing to pay immediately, not after they've waited for the item to go down in price. Whatever people are paying for an item that moves it quickly is its actual value, not a "tanked" value. If someone moves an item at for 20k at -1000 your listing price, they are not -1k, they are +20k, and you are -+0. IE, they made money and you didn't, so you can't sit here telling people how to make more money when you don't actually know how.

[computerquip]

People get upset with undercutting because of the misguided reason. Your stuff isn't going to sell faster because you put it up for 20k less. You're just giving it to the guy with 100,000,000 gil already for cheaper. In reality, all it's done is lowered the price for that item until all items at that price are bought out.

Yes. At the end of the day, the goal is for *my* stuff to sell. If someone else is selling something like the Cape of Happiness for like 900k, I'm absolutely going to slash those prices down to 300-400k because I know that more average players will be able to afford and buy more at that price.

This is probably not how that works. I can almost say with certainty the people who are buying at that price are putting it right back up on the market to make a quick 500k.

[kaynide]

Your average player doesn't care about whether the market tanks or not, nor do they invest time into seeing how fast or regular something sells to make a judgment call about how much cheaper they should go.

Price your items at whatever you want, but there is also no reason not to try to make as much money as you possibly can...so ideally your undercutting isn't that off. Something like 10% / 10,000g max cheaper, see how it sells and adjust.

Or, alternatively like me, don't care about the prices because you're just selling random drops and price it for as whatever you think is fair and get that cash. I absolutely don't care if I'm undercutting in a huge way because frankly I'm just doing quick cash grabs. If someone is really upset about me undercutting so hard, they can buy my item and flip it for profit. Win win.

[Shibi]

Is this behaviour 'normal' or 'acceptable' in FFXIV?

Sure. Some people will get annoyed, but it's a standard market economy so meh. 1 gil undercutting btw is what makes them lose their hair, but this can also lessen your profits.

What I find is if the item sells a big quantity and it's early in the expansion undercutting isn't the best way to sell just list it at a good price and let the bottom feeding people be bought out while you sleep, your items will also be sold at the higher price in the morning. More profit, roughly the same time spent.

Use the history button on the MB to see where to price effectively, or use a statistics website that does stuff like this: https://universalis.app/market/36242 to pick one thing randomly showing the 0% price that is selling is 1000-1100 (in the Aether DC at this time) while the cheapest is around 500. See how many are for sale under the 0% mark and decide... will that x many sell while I sleep so mine get bought up? Can I afford to risk doubling my profit while I sleep?

[Misutoraru]

I recently read a thread where someone was denouncing people who undercut on the Market Board, which is something that took me by surprise. I figured that it was something that was normal in every MMO auction house-esque system, or at the very least that's the experience I got since it was prevalent in every MMO I've played up to this point... and in real-life...

But since I'm still relatively new and only just now getting the opportunity to participate in an early expansion economy, I just want to ask, because I've been absolutely vomiting materials onto the Market Board at undercut prices and smiling with greedy glee when they all sell before the person whom I have undercut.

Is this behaviour 'normal' or 'acceptable' in FFXIV?

Free market, price whatever price you want. If anyone get annoyed by your undercut, they are free to buy it and priced at their desired price.

I am evil if getting less profit is the price to pay to see those get mad. I am enjoying it more than you think