Undercutting

[Illmaeran]

Sometimes I'll list things in quantity at a substantial discount knowing the Market Barons will snap it up. I know every map I sell is being bought by botters, and while it hurts my heart to do so, I've had to accept the simple fact that the individual gatherer/crafter like me is supplying a mass-marketeer 90% of the time unless I'm targeting something like GC daily or leve items.

[Zfz]

It's stupid to undercut if the item is a seller's market: e.g. there's an unending stream of people wanting to buy the stuff.

It's stupid to insist on a higher price if the item is a buyer's market: e.g. there's a very limited population of people who all only ever want that item once, ever, so the demand dries up quickly and people are lowering their prices already.

Undercutting in the right situation to move stock is the smart thing to do. But blindly undercutting everything is devaluing your play time; unless you actually don't have anything else you want to do in game, then it becomes the smart thing to do, since that is your gameplay loop.

So yes, undercutting is perfectly fine and accepted. There are no rules regarding pricing on the market. If you have the time to move 10 times the stock of other crafters, there's no reason why you should limit your throughput just because others want to craft less and so they try to convince you that you shouldn't do what suits your situation.

The market is literally PvP. There are no rules on the market.

[kejakalope]

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?

It's absolutely normal. Some people get mad when a dingbat screws up a seller's market for everyone else, but this has always happened since launch day of ARR. Some people play the market ruthlessly, some play it conservatively, some play it with no idea what the Hell they're doing, and some (way the fuck too many) run constant 1-gil-undercutting bots.

Be nice if Square could do more about that last set.

[GrizzlyTank]

Only one way to get a definite end to undercutting. Buy orders.

AKA: Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled.
That way it would be significantly harder for someone to crash the value of items by grossly undercutting them.

[Zfz]

Only one way to get a definite end to undercutting. Buy orders.

AKA: Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled.
That way it would be significantly harder for someone to crash the value of items by grossly undercutting them.

Wouldn't that just instead give us people who cry about "idiots who buy at +50% price just to get their item fast"? :3

So instead of complaints about undercutters, we get complaints about overbidders.

[Risvertasashi]

Only one way to get a definite end to undercutting. Buy orders.

AKA: Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled.
That way it would be significantly harder for someone to crash the value of items by grossly undercutting them.

I've wanted this so much since I first played an MMO with it.

It's also nice because if I want to buy something low on stock, I can send a signal that says "Hey I'm willing to pay this amount for this thing" and someone can see that and hopefully fill it, if they feel the price is fair. And, conversely, if it's something I can make or get, I can do the same and get instant gil and not have to worry about something like "Well this item sells for 400k but usually only sells 1 or 2 a week so one person could tank the market down to 50k or even less in that time"

Sadly I don't think SE will ever give us this...

What i do find stupid is gatherers see mats selling in stacks of 99 at 4.5k then they put theirs up for 600gil. Why? It was selling fine at 4.5k, now the whole market for that mat crashed. Those are the people you should be annoyed with, not everyday undercutters.

If 600 is too low it will go back up. I always stock a wide variety of items and if something crashes - which is frequent - I just take it off the market for a bit. A bit being anywhere from a few hours to a few days. There's literally not enough time in a day for me to gather everything I could sell anyways, so going low isn't worth it for me - I just hold and focus on more profitable stuff until the low market comes back up.

If it stays low for an extended time, as for example some of the new endwalker mats are starting to do (but we've had over a month of good prices so I won't complain), then I'll eventually just sell off my stock at a low price and exit the market. Such is the free market.

[Jojoya]

Price things the way you want. You decide the value of your time, not others.

If someone thinks you've listed it too low, they're welcome to buy the item to relist for profit. That takes your low priced item off the mb and returns current prices to what they had been, usually before anyone other than the buyer has noticed.

Only one way to get a definite end to undercutting. Buy orders.

AKA: Someone makes a request for an item for x amount of gil, and no one can sell below that amount until that buy order is fulfilled.
That way it would be significantly harder for someone to crash the value of items by grossly undercutting them.

I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

The last thing you want to do is give buyers such absolute control over the market prices because they're looking to pay as little as possible just as sellers are trying to sell for as much as possible. That's why the free market exists - so a price point can be reached that both sides are willing to accept as reasonable.

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.

If such prices are exceptionally low as you claim, bargain hunters will snatch up the items to relist long before the gatherer has their next stack ready to sell.

There is no griefing involved. They're selling at the price they find acceptable even if you don't like that price. You're always welcome to find other items they aren't selling and sell those instead.

I'd also love to see your realistic examples of items that players will happily pay 700k to buy when others are ready to sell at only 40k. The average player is not that rich and the player who is rich enough to afford that much probably got that way by doing their own farming instead of buying.

Let me make you angry. A while back, I wanted to get a Platinum Scarf of Slaying for an alt's transmog. I planned to be lazy and buy off the MB but they were going for 100k gil each, which was ridiculous considering I could buy the mats for about 1200 gil. I checked the sales history and sure enough, almost no one was buying them. There had been 2 sold in the last month and the sales history extended back 6 months to where the scarf had been selling fairly consistently at 10-15k before someone decided they wanted to jack up the price to 100k.

I'm now selling 10-15 Platinum Scarfs of Slaying at 10k gil each per week. I did play with the price at first to see what would work out best for profit by volume. Sales dropped off almost immediately when I tried posting them at 20k+. Dropping the price below 10k didn't increase the volume being sold so I settled at 10k.

Because I'm using an affordable price for the type of player most likely to buy (new players who have reached level 50 but don't even have access to tomestones yet), they're selling well compared to the dismal rate they were selling at prior to me "tanking" the market. I didn't tank it - I revived it. I'm not the only one selling them now. Other players have also been selling them at or slightly below my price in recent weeks. Compare that to the 1-2 per month being sold when I first went looking to buy one.

Greedy sellers are their own worst enemy because they kill their markets by listing at prices higher than players are willing (or frequently able) to pay. Profit is still profit. It adds up fast over time as you sell more.

[Skivvy]

Price things the way you want. You decide the value of your time, not others.

If someone thinks you've listed it too low, they're welcome to buy the item to relist for profit. That takes your low priced item off the mb and returns current prices to what they had been, usually before anyone other than the buyer has noticed.


I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

The last thing you want to do is give buyers such absolute control over the market prices because they're looking to pay as little as possible just as sellers are trying to sell for as much as possible. That's why the free market exists - so a price point can be reached that both sides are willing to accept as reasonable.

I've not seen a buy/sell system quite like the one Grizzly had mentioned, but I do like how it's handled in GW2. You can place a buy or sell order for whatever price you like, but no one is obligated or stuck just because someone low balled an item. You can still choose to sell at what price you like.

A visual:


So on that one, I guess if someone is feeling suuupuer charitable, they could actually sell that armor to the person requesting to buy it at 35 gold. Or they could insta-sell it to the top buy-request. OR list it at what they feel like and wait for someone to come along to buy it.

[Risvertasashi]

I list a buy order for 580 gear at 1 gil.

I didn't just crash your marketboard. I killed it. No one is going to sell to me for 1 gil because materials are more expensive but now they also can't sell to others because my buy order has to be filled first under your system.

Yeah you don't understand how it works at all.

Buy orders are not required to be filled. They're an option. No one would fill a stupidly low priced buy order, just like no one will buy a wind crystal priced at 999,999,999 gil.

Isnt undercutting part of balancing the economy? If someone puts up a ton of stuff way low for the amount of effort to make/get it then you can buy out all their stuff and make a major profit. Then eventually the market stabilises behind a price right?

Sure it'd be nice if everything stayed at a million gill sale wise, but as patches continue and people jump into the market supply goes up and demand goes down, natural for prices to tank.

Yes, but a surprising amount of people don't actually want a free market. They want SE to control it for them so they can have 500~800% markup guaranteed. They just try to find more sympathetic ways to phrase it than this.