Undercutting

[Shibi]

...Other than that the only way to compete in a markerboard centric economy is to undercut.

It is if you only ever chase the low hanging fruit of crafting gearsets.

Cross world is an awesome way to make large money. Work out things people need or desire. Buy them low on another server and sell them on your main server at the higher price.

Look for things that crafters use a lot of in small quantity, but people only ever list as 99's - sell yours much higher priced per unit, but much smaller quantities. Sometimes it's even very profitable to buy that one stack of 99 cucumbers (the only stack there) and list them as 10's for double or triple the price.

Look at the old, old shiny weapons.. see what there is a shortage of... make those, the ex trials for the shiny mats can be soloed, although the MB price on those mats have collapsed a lot, so that can be worth it too. Don't undercut these low quantity items, sell matching the lowest or even higher, yours will sell.

[Eraden]

I always undercut when I put my gathered materials up on the market. I consider the actual gathering to be the fun part. Making some Gil is just icing on the cake. "You mean I actually get to MAKE MONEY doing stuff that is fun? SIGN ME UP!"

[Sunhwapark]

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

It's fine to sell at any price you want, if it wasn't we'd have some sort of marketplace listing regulation thing similar to Black Desert's Auction house system where items can only be listed for sales at certain price ranges.

[Bearded]

Price at the level you want - nobody has the right to think they can dictate what is "market price". It may not be popular but it is true.

[Jin-]

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.

This, but you can't fix stupid people. No matter what you tell them they just go back to "I want to sell it fast argument '

[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.

[Krotoan]

You can undercut by chunks, sell quickly and have Gil in hand and a retainer slot free to put something else up.. or you can play the death-by-a-thousand-cuts 1 gil downhill race that is marketboard watching.

Personally I'll take a 10-20% loss of what the marketboard price is if the next time I visit my retainer the slot is free and the gil is waiting.