Who Is Lowering The Price?

The real money isn't farming items - it's farming other players. *wink*

I'm gonna start selling tarus at a lower price :)

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We tried to auction one (Tarutaru) last night after Kirin for 100 Points with Elvaan Prio and no one would take her...

I just can't wrap my mind around people that lower the price of ***, especially to the extreme it's been getting on Fairy. I don't think it's RMT or anything, just retards, to put it bluntly. People SO CONCERNED with selling things in like 2.6 seconds that they'll actually throw away any profit they were gonna get in order to sell their ***fast.

I mean, I understand supply and demand, but that doesn't explain the dipshit that's throwing ***up on the AH for well below market price. Say something sells consistently for 8k, there a little more on the AH then normally sells, so someone drives the price down to 7kish. That's normal. But the someone that comes along and sells the ***for like 2k, that's just HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. The market usually recovers, but it takes time, and meanwhile I'm sitting on crap that I don't have the room for.

I may be a little bitter about it right now, because the other day I spent like 3 hours getting the Jaguar Mantle, which was selling pretty well for 50k, only to throw mine up at that price and watch the price get driven down to 36k within like 3 sales. What the hell?! I've had it kick back 3 times now, and it's pissing me off. Everytime I list it lower, but I get *** undercut, by like 5k+. If I had the capital, I'd *** buy all the undercutters ***myself to restabilize the market, but I don't unfortunately. It's the same with Quadav Bug Broth, sells 4-5 a day for 8k a stack, 2 on sale, someone lists their's for like 4.5k. Pretty freaking stupid.

People complain about how hard it is to make money in this game, and how the economy sucks. I don't blame SE, and I don't blame RMT. I blame the HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE people that play this game that are SO IMPATIENT that they'd rather turn a profitable market to ***then wait an extra day for their 3k. They're the ones that are making everything that used to pay well pay for ***. Also, I hope crafters enjoy farming a lot, because with the way mats are getting driven into the toilet, you're going to soon find everyone NPCing them or not farming them at all. ***, I make more money BUYING ***off the AH that's being sold for less then vendor price and NPCing it then I do SELLING ***...and that's pretty damn sad.

Crafters can always contract farmers if they can't get the items on AH.

On Hydra (Beta server), I used to pay people to harvest Red Moko Grass for me. My time was more valuably spent doing other things, but I could hire my farmers for what was a reasonable cost to me and enough gil to make them willing to do it.

This still does work, and actually it's not a bad arrangement for the farmer if they can reach a good deal, since they can probably make more than NPC cost and they still don't have to hassle with selling it on the AH and AH cost.

Player-to-player transactions really work best for the players as far as their financial interests, but the tradeoff is time. The Auction House allows absentee selling.

While the Quadav Bug Broth example certainly seems like it's frustrating to you, if that other seller is content to sell for a lot slimmer profit than you are, it's his/her choice. Perhaps if you are the main two suppliers, you can work out some form of agreement on what to sell for.

My old linkshell had a rule on this regarding the acceptable minimum sale price for Mannequin Hands, since the technique for beating the BCNM was devised by the linkshell as a group and it was in our interest to keep the price high since it seemed as if no one else was supplying them at the time.

It wasn't until another supplier showed up and started undercutting that we had to lower prices or face unsold goods.

On top of that, most of us were newly transferred from Hydra to Odin at the time, so the ability to get 800k-1M for a 100% BCNM20 drop, and usually to be able to sell for that overnight, was amazing to us. Unfortunately, greed got the better of some members, who didn't understand that something like Mannequins are durable goods, not consumable, and that if you flood the market, you will destroy your own selling price.

TBH, it's the consumables that are the biggest thorn in my side. I know this isn't going to make me popular with people that enjoy bidding 100 gil for something and getting it (although I don't blame them obviously, I blame the idiot selling for 100 gil in the first place) but people that take something that sells NO MATTER WHAT and drive the price into the dirt annoy the piss out of me. I'm a cook, so everything I make is a consumable. Take something like Yagudo Drinks and Au Laits, (even Marron Glace, god what a PITA it is to sell them for what they're worth) which will sell steadily for a reasonable price, and you'll come across the guy that's selling them for break even, if not a loss after you subtract the AH fees to sell them in Jeuno. I realize not everyone's in the game to make a profit, but why would someone willingly short themselves? It just doesn't make any sense to me at all. And the destabilization to the market when people do that ripples, and all of a sudden something that sold for 2k steadily now struggles to be sold at 1.5k or even less for WEEKS...all because people couldn't be just a LITTLE patient.

If I looked at the sales history and saw that the ***was bing sold by people with names like "kjsdagskfdjha" and such, then at least I'd know it was the damn dirty gilsellers. But it's not, it's regular players. I mean, they obviously worked hard enough to get a high level cooking skill, why piss all over the rewards one would get for doing so? I don't know if it's as bad in other crafts, as I have no experience in leveling them that high, but cooking is getting pretty cut-throat. I even wait until there's none of a particular item on auction, but it just never fails that as soon as I list mine, 5 more will show up that are for less then what I listed mine for, which 9 times out of 10 is the average price...I'm not even trying to drive the price up or anything, that's futile; I'm trying to sell ***for what it's WORTH.

Anyways, yeah, I'm just ranting. It just irritates the ***out of me, and it seems like forethought and working together pretty much went out the window lately. When I started playing (granted, this was during inflation) there was a LOT more solidarity in the market for materials, even though it was at 100 times the current price. Now it's just not worth it anymore. Like I said, when it gets to the point when I can literally buy ***up off the AH and turn a profit selling it to a vendor, then there's something seriously wrong. I know it sounds stupid of me to say that since I'm making money off of it, but I honestly WOULD rather the AH be stable then make money off of idiots. At least then you would have some sort of predictability in selling your crap.

Oh well, I'll get over it...like I said, I'm just irritated as all hell right now about it lol

People who continue to produce what is already in high supply drive down the price.

When I do a run on Prism Powders or Silent Oils, I first sell within the LS to anyone that wants to buy for going rate. That saves me AH Tax and they know where their gil is going.

After that, any leftover I just stockpile on mules and wait for the "perfect" time to sell. Usually that's a weekend when supply happens to be low. I get frustrated when a stack of Prisms drops to 5k, but I also know that if I time it right, I can sell for 7-8k if I'm patient.

While I wait for that time to come, I make money doing other things, like pimping the corner of Ru'Lude and Upper J.

I'm gonna walk into the Lion's Den.

I'm your typical undercutter. And more often then none, I ALWAYS do it. I just recently single handedly drove the price of Fish Mithakbob's on my server to nearly 1/2 the price they were before.

I flooded the market with em. I had approximately 40 stacks of em after crafting 5 stacks of Nebi's. 5 stacks. And I had 15 stacks of Nebi's on me. I'm leveling fishing so Nebi's are my current target fish for skill ups, hence why I had no many.

Needless to say I wasn't going to wait patiently for all 40 stacks to sell. I undercut the price as much as 1k at a time when the original price was 9k, eventually the mithkabobs dropped down to 4,000 after I undercut the undercutters. The prices rebounded back to 5,000 though, and I have nearly sold all my mithkabobs.

I'm not gonna defend my actions, I'm not an economist so trying to justify what I'm doing wrong will fall on deaf ears. All I know is prices will level themselves off eventually. If you see someone undercutting to save themselves having to wait 1 or 2 days, what should you do? Wait 1 or 2 days, that will starve the market and drive the price back up. It's all about balance.

And if anyone is wondering, I ended up just selling the remaining 10 stacks of Nebi's directly to the AH rather then further destroy the Fish Mithkabob market.

True, but what about people that drive down the price when there isn't a high supply on the AH? That's the part that makes me scratch my head. I'm not dumb enough to go list, say Pamama Au Laits, for the average price when there's 30 of them sitting there. That's like pissing gil away, since you know they're all up there for 30% of the normal price. I sell when there's like none, yet they kick back anyways because, like I said, someone always manages to undercut me. The best part is when they sell theirs for what MINE was listed for...it's like insult to injury. Nothing can be done about it, it's just maddening...



I'm not trying to flame you or start a fight or anything, but why would you do that? Fishkabobs, and other foods, sell a finite number per day. Regardless of the price (unless it's ridiculously high) there always gonna sell that amount, because people will always be running out and need more. I mean, I dunno, maybe people search the AH and say "oh wow, that's so cheap I'm gonna buy up more then I normally would" but in my experience with cooking that doesn't happen very often. If 25 stacks of mithkabobs sell today, then 25 stacks are prolly gonna sell tomorrow, and the day after, and so on and so forth...

I can understand undercutting a little, everyone does THAT. But 1/2 the price? I just don't understand the rationale, is all. I mean, obviously it's shared by a lot of people, or else this situation wouldn't be as pervasive as it is now...but I really just don't understand, and I would like to.

Reason was already stated. They didn't want to wait. Granted it couldve been 30min but think about it if you really want the gil in a short time.

Its basic supply and demand. You want it to sell quick. sell for less. I can garuntee there are crystals out there that sell for less than the amount to NPC them

But the demand is there regardless. Those items sell the same amount everyday. Without fail. People always need food. Until new food is created they will always need it, so supply and demand doesn't really apply. The demand hasn't changed, yet the price has?

If people want to short themselves, so be it. I'll be there, waiting for them to sell for less then NPC price, so I can make a profit on it without having to wait at all (made 70k for about 2 hours total time spent over a 2 week period). With all the bitching and complaining about how hard it is to make money these days (I started a thread a while back about the inflation, and a lot of people cried about how they miss it, and making the fat money they used to) it just seems that it's the players themselves that cause the problems...it ain't RMT, and it aint SE, it's the player base itself. People don't have the right to cry about it if they help facilitate it.

Econ discussions on MMOs are pretty jacked imho. The folks who always rail against lower prices seem to be the high school drop-outs who can't wrap their minds around basic economics.

And this is definitely not a rocket science; you can pick up any Econ 101 textbook and discover these principles. What's amusing is that IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE those rules don't apply. LOL. Of course it does.

The level of information, timing, personal preferences, whether people find an item fashionable, whether people are depressed and the amount of sunshine at that time are ALL inputs into the price at the AH, among many. RMT are clearly influencing the price as well, they're just part of the market. Even the posts on this thread railing against undercutting influence price.

Personally, I nearly always sell at a discount in the city AHs to get rid of the stuff. That's just my preference.

I'd love a communist marketplace where everything sells at THE IDEAL FIXED PRICE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS but that's just lolEcon.

Deflation isn't a bad thing. The value of gil is at an all time high, which means RMT business becomes less and less reasonable. Repeatable quests which were often left untouched are now more lucrative than many commonly farmed items are on the AH.

The only thing I could really ask for is that SE make more frequent updates with NPC based prices to keep up with our ever changing economy. They knew how much gil was being thrown out and how deflated we got and as a result cut the cost of Dynamis and Limbus in half.

However, I wish they didn't cut off legitimate gil making practices that hurt legit players more so than RMT. I'm sure everyone remembers the day they cut NPC selling price of Beast Blood and the 3 beastmen weapon drops from demons.

I don't know if you were calling me a high school dropout, but I assure you I am not. That being said...

Supply and demand, everyone throws that out as a justification for selling something for pennies on the AH. But I'm not talking about something that has a finite market penetration, like Scorpion Harnesses, or Mining Gear. Obviously, the fact that pretty much everyone that has a job to level 57 has a scorpion harness at this point, and that is going to effect the price and drive it down...the demand is less. But Meat Mithkabobs...everyone's gonna use them. Unless the number of players online drastically changes from day to day, the demand will ALWAYS be the same. Sure, ripples happen here or there, undercutting is natural, I do it, too. Who doesn't? But what I WON'T do, which is what I don't understand, is undercut to the point of the absurd.

Say I come up with a Flourite somewhere, check the AH and see that it sells pretty steady for 2k a piece. Is it smart to sell it for 500 gil? Obviously not, although you may luck out and get the 2k, but you take a risk in getting 500 gil for it, and cheating yourself out of 1500 gil. Why? Why take the risk? Undercut to 1800, ***, list for 1300 even...but 500 gil? And that's ignoring the fact that if you checked the sell price you'd see the vendor gives like 2.3k for it. Congratulations, you just threw money away! {Good Job!}

All I ask for is some sort of stability. At least having some ballpark of what something is worth. Back in the days of uber inflation there was. Dark Crystals went for 18k a stack...maybe you could pick them up for 17, even 15 or 16. But you NEVER saw them listed for like 3-5k. Just didn't happen, try and buy all you want, you wont get any for that price. But nowadays, it happens ALL THE TIME. What happened to the stability?

Anyways, eff it...like I said, sell ***for below vendor price as much as you want...I'll happily collect the profits on the backside.

If only everyone knew that when you sell things below it's initial value among peers in the market, you lose money. Would be kinda silly if say a car company sold a car that costs $5000 to make and sold it for $3000 each.

I'll admit to selling a 30k item for 1k before. I get frustrated with having to relist the item everyday, so I'll do something extreme to get mine sold. But I farm all my own ingredients, so either way is a profit. And more often than not people will pay the full price simply because of how AH sell priority works.

Sometimes undercutters need to be taught a lesson. Would be great if you could Jay and Silent Bob 'em.

I've done it on some items that I had to keep putting them back on ah, I just sometimes say fuk it and put it for 1 gil just someone can just take it at whatever they wanna pay for it.

I see both point of views kinda. I've been gardening elemental ore for a long time. And I don't always pay attention to what ore i grow on which mule. last harvest i ended up with 20+ water ore. they dont really sell that often, and by putting them up for the same price they have been selling for, I'll lose a couple of thousand everytime they get sent back to me. I might as well lower the price to make sure that mine is the one selling, and it's not really hurting the profit for me.

if im getting the usual 2-3 ore / 10 pots I can live with going 3-5 k under the usual selling price of ore and its not gonna kill me. And I'd rather do that and get the stuff sold than constantly have them sent back to DB so I have to pay the AH taxes over and over again.

On the other hand what seems to hapen to me alot is this.

check ah, item i want have been sold for 40k the past 10 sales. I really need that item/spell/gear and I cant buy it for less than 65k. if you think ppl undercutting is annoying this is worse.

example. tornado was selling for 50 k on my server since the dark ages. all of a sudden I'm the first that have to pay 70 k for it. Reverend Sash was selling for 90-100 k, price jumps up to 130 k just when I need it.

Thats annoying if anything, lol.

I try to...my opening bid on almost ANYTHING is like 100gil-1k. It takes me longer to pick stuff up, but depending on the item/price, I start really low and increase incrementally.

Bottom line is, I get ***for the lowest possible price I can, and also get the satisfaction of that extra added "*** YOU" to the guy that thought they'd be slick and put their ***up for cheap as hell.

It's not always RMT.

Anyone who assumes it is, clearly isn't very clever.

"Fixing" prices, isn't against the rules. You can buy/sell items for whatever you want. This happens IRL and in game. Assuming it's "silly" just because it probably affects you to some degree, doesn't change anything. Stop crying!

The bottom line is that there are many, many, many *obviously* ways to make gil. This is one of them. Shrewd.. yes... but it works.

Besides, I don't know why people are bitching. Want an item? Wait till the price drops.

The main thing is... stop complaining. All I ever hear these days are people who *** about AH transactions.. undercutters, flooders, buyers... what-have-you. You wouldn't be bitching if it was you making gil. The only reason people *** is because they weren't clever enough to think of it in the first place.

One caveat... to RMT who do it, just to ruin a price so they make more IRL money.. yeah they can suck a ***.

Why so serious?

BTW. XXXnumbertwoXXX *w/e* you have the coolest avatar I've evar seen.

Sorry NumberTwo, I didn't see you there. I was responding to the first few posts on the thread. I didn't direct the High School dropout comment at you, I'm sorry if it came across that way.

For those of you reading this NumberTwo is actually a friend of mine and he's pretty sharp (for an Elvaan...) ;)

Just to stick my foot back into the fire... I saw this and I HAD to respond :)

Deflation is HORRIBLE. In RL deflation will cause ppl to NOT do stuff. If you had the option of creating something worth $100 today or doing nothing and tomorrow you knew it would be worth $90, you would choose to do nothing. If most ppl did this then the economy would death spiral down until some shock occurred to the system. If you don't believe me then look at RL.

In Japan, average incomes (both real and nominal) are lower now than in 1989... They had 10 years of deflation that the government spent $5 TRILLION dollars to get themselves out of. Their govt used to have no debt in 1989, now it's like $4.5 TRILLION... Unlucky.

Maybe that's why SE (being JP) thought it was OK to bring FFXI into this deflationary spiral we're in now. I admit getting rid of RMT is good but back in the days that Dark Crystals were nearly $20k a stack, I could actually MAKE money. it might not have been enough to buy me all 6 HQ elemental staves but I could get by. And with prices so high back then undercutting didn't really mean anything, I could still make money.

Today it takes me MONTHS to farm/sell food to buy big things like elemental grips. Removing money from the economy is the culprit for this. The supply of money itself has diminished and as a result prices have fallen. Since SE changes prices once in a Blue Moon the average player just gets squeezed. It's hard to afford anything, this actually causes some of the undercutting ppl are complaining about. Since you've invested in making something you might as well get SOMETHING for it rather than seeing the price decline further. A lot of crafters are simply locked into their craft after leveling it. It's just a pain to level another one so they just keep making stuff and hope that the price goes up but sell at whatever they can get.

The other possibility is that the next time you may choose to produce NOTHING and this is another reason why undercutting is such a *** now. There are fewer suppliers, one undercutter will now RUIN the market for something. Back then it was just a blip because sooo many ppl were producing. Now it's a ghost town for most items that don't sell at least a couple a day. See how good that was back then? More supply ==> lower relative prices but absolute prices are rising so your MARGINS are bigger. Most of the recipes on FFXIAH indicate negative profit when you buy everything from the AH but I bet that back in 2005 that most recipes were profitable. I have no proof though.

IMHO SE itself should start putting more gil in circulation. This actually reduces RMT demand and creates steadily RISING prices which is good for everybody. They could do this easily too: increase NPC sale prices, lower AH fees, increase gil drop rates from mobs, etc. What SE really needs is an economist on their staff, even the scrubiest of the scrub economists out there could've told you that you want slight INFLATION, not precipitous DEFLATION.

Thank you ^^



No problem, this is just something I feel strongly about and it's amking me a little testy...which may have something to do with literally EVERYTHING I've been trying to sell kicking back 3 times or more over the last two weeks >.<

And whats this about Elvaan? Elvaan=the best! ^^

Seriously though, and I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here (well, maybe I am, I dunno) the market has been all over the place the last month or so. I'm not the only one seeing it, EVERYONE in my LS is being effected by this. Raw materials and consumables is taking a beating...I watched Puk Wings, which sold steadily for 12k-15k, get pushed down to 6k, and in one case, someone sold a stack for 1k (I'm not gonna call out names, but it's right there for the world to see). The market got totally destroyed by undercutting...and it hasn't rebounded yet. Even if you try to sell at what the going price was, assuming there are NONE up at that moment, no one's gonna buy it, because the history is all 6k-7k now...so they managed to devalue a commodity by half because people just HAD to have that first sale. I seriously doubt Puk Wings will ever go back to what they were at this point...

Normal undercutting is healthy to keep prices from spiraling upwards, and by normal I mean 10%, 20%, maybe even 30% off of regular, sustainable market price. But undercutting by 50%, 70%, even 90% is too disruptive to market stability. Not too many people care about this, but when it pinches their pocket, they will...and at that point it will be too late and EVERYONE will be bitching about how hard it is to make any money. Oh, wait...