Economy Blues

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Dirgesong

Dirgesong

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Okay . . . I really hope that some people can learn from this one

<rant>

Undercutting someone's prices at the AH is the work of morons.

Why some people feel the need to drop the price of items just so their's sell faster is something I can't get my head around . . . all these bloody idiots are doing is throwing away money. Something sells for 2500 whee! all's well and good . . . all of a sudden it's 2300 . . . then 2000, someone's just lost 500 gil and taken away a good money maker.

GRRRR

it seems every time there's an influx of new players the economy takes a hit.
</rant>
 
I haven't had much experience with the FFXI economy, but I dare to compare the EQ one just to illustrate the point. Automated vendors (AH In FFXI, Bazaar in EQ) result in overall lower prices because chances are multiple people are selling the same goods at the same time.

The EQ veterans will remember GFay, or later the EC Tunnel. If one has to rely on the right circumstances to be able to buy an item (someone who is selling is online at the same time the prospective buyer is online, and by some miracle they find each other and agree on a price), then prices tend to be high. If an item is readily available 24/7, and there is an ample supply of it, then the price tends to go down (except for Moat Carp, which is 4k no matter what, which is surprising to me, but I guess there is just a steadily high demand for it).

In the 2,500 vs. 2,000 example the difference is 500 gil (big surprise!). To some 500 gil simply don't matter at all. Makes it suck for those to whom 500 gil do matter a lot, but such is life.
 
Morons? I beg your pardon. I make about 20k a day on AH trading by undercutting other people's prices. I would certainly rather sell 10-14 items a day at 1-3k profit each than 5-7 items over 3 days at 3-4k profit (or maybe not sell at all). I try not to undercut it drastically, and I disperse my inventory so I'm only selling quantities up to 2 for about 7-10 items. It's the idiots that flood the market with all 7 of their AH slots on the same item that anger me, and I usually get even by dropping the price to maybe only 500 gil profit in an effort to get my competition disinterested. Also, if one item gets flooded, it usually means something else on the AH is getting neglected and the price is rising.

General rule of thumb: If there are more quantities in stock than what typically sell in a day, the price is going to drop. Deal with it. ^^
 
one thing u can do, if u have enough money is buy out the cheap items and sell them at ur desired price, and make profit off those. Its a good idea, but unfortunately, because the AH keeps records for what items were bought at, ppl may get the idea that they should sell it at those prices. My lil bro did this in eq with bazaar mode. The rat bastage bought out lodizal shield each and everytime he found one and resold it for like 5k more. After my lil break from eq, i come back to see my lodizal shield gone and all of them in the bazaar for 15-18k....WTF!? theyre normally 10k. If uve got the resources to do so, u can royally jackup the AH to return the favor of undercutting prices.
 
well the real problem is everyone wants theirs sold fast and first. suprisingly the price on crawlers silk is usually around 10-12k because everyone is raving on and on about how iot is a great money-maker(even thought it is..Ps2 players kinda exadurate it) But the same theory goes on and on with few exceptions(i.e. crawlers silk :P)
 
I think the general thing that Irks me in this game is an over-dependancy on gil. It should be a little easier to find items your character actually needs off of monsters and such (and I'm not talking rare drops off of NMs). It really gets to me when I'm a lvl 31 character and a monster I'm fighting drops a Bronze Subligar! GRRR!

Crafting is just a hole until you can get it to a decent level which is damn near impossible with all the useless crap you make in the early levels with expensive materials. Farming is great but the more people that farm the cheaper things get...and don't even start me on quests. BS they're a easy way to make money! I went into bastok with 14,000 gil and I'm down to 3,000 after 23 quests. And yes I did try to farm for the items I need but after 2 hrs in the mines looking for 4 flint stones you tend to go a little greyer on top.

If you don't have an absolutely rediculous amount of time to kill in this game you make no cash. I don't get much time online and the last thing I want to do when with the little time I have is sit there and cut grass for 5 hours. I wish they made it a little easier to find drops as I said before....Because it's getting rediculous when I cant afford to keep my RDM in spells....
 
Oh I know...but it's just I want to be a really really really effective RDM and that means being up to date with equipment and spells....the only major one I don't have right now is sleep, but I'm going to have to farm and save up...hehe that and my lvl 10 gloves ^^
 
I have to agree with that players should be able to get decent loot off of XP mobs. I am very used to EQ where you could get decent stuff as you were leveling along at a reasonable rate. I think that overall there are not enough items in the game. That's probably a console port issue, but I feel that the availability of lots of different loot adds to the individuality of players, while in FFXI you can easily meet someone who has the exact same set of gear you do.
 
The big problem with the economy is that it is a perpetual slippery slope.

Undercut someone by 200 gil then the price effectively lowers because everyone matches you to sell quick, until someone else wants to sell quick and undercuts the current price again. Then it repeats.

But at the same time, you look at the items on the Auction Block that are only made by higher level crafters, the price stays fairly constant because there is a little more understanding that if something is selling for a certain price it will stay selling for that price as long as you don't drive down the price to make a quicker buck.

It may just be the scotsman in me but after a while those hits really start to add up.
 
Dirgesong said:
But at the same time, you look at the items on the Auction Block that are only made by higher level crafters, the price stays fairly constant because there is a little more understanding that if something is selling for a certain price it will stay selling for that price as long as you don't drive down the price to make a quicker buck.
Click to expand...
I'll have to disagree on this. I think the price stays constant because there is a high demand and a very low supply for those items. There are very few of those on the block and they tend to sell out quickly, thus there is no need to undercut because on any given day you are 99.99% certain that your item will sell.
 
Umm..... we're both talking about items on AH in Quetzalcotl, right? With all due respect to your concept of "implied understanding amongst high-level crafters," I see those items fluxuate in prices by thousands of gil all the time. Those high-level crafters didn't get to level 90+ skills because they blindly put their stock up at the last number in Price History to "wait their turn" to sell. They learned that if more items appear on the market than what well sell in those 90 Vanadiel days, you have to drop the price in order to sell anything at all and avoid wasting that AH fee.
 
I agree that in Jeuno it's a little different since the AH fee is a lot higher, making selling more competetive, but if you look at the AH's in the other three cities, most notably windurst you'll find it selling hell.

It's almost cyclical, every couple days an item will drop 100 gil at a time until it hits rock bottom, people buy them out and the price will reset itself or atleast somewhere close to where it was months before.

And for a lot of items it has nothing to do with demand, take fire crystals as an example, the demand will always be there as long as there are crafters and hell losing a 4 gil service charge is no big deal . . . but people are so damned impatient that in the last two weeks I've casually watched the crystal price dip from 1900 to 1700, and before long I'm sure it'll hit 1500 before people start thinking to ask more for their stacks.
 
If someone undercuts to sell quick, why is it that everyone follows suit?

"If your friend told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?"


Personally, I agree with the undercutting slightly theory, in that I am able to move more in a short period of time. I would rather sell as much as I can as quick as I can rather than throw items out. I have my main character and a mule, and they are both jammed up with stacks of items. I undercut and I still can't sell fast enough.
The only time I'll even think of trying to post an item for more than price hist. shows is if I am the only one selling it.

If price history shows earth crystal selling for 3-400, with 80 stacks for sale currently, are you going to be the bold one that tries selling for 700?
If so, why? No one will pay that. The market is what it is. Ultimately, most items are worth something besides just gil from the AH. If the economy is crap, start crafting with the items you have. Buy low, sell high.

If the economy is a buyers market, then you buy, thus decreasing the amount of that item available to others. This affects supply and demand, and you force the market to become a sellers market once again.
What do you think happens with the price of crude oil?
 
I'm cool like Deacen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!one!!!11omgwtfbbqroflmaololerskates1
 
Sell High, Buy low.
Is now..

Sell low.. Buy Lower!!!
 
Gutress, I can't uderstand for the life of me if im supposed to be offended by that.. hmmm, give me time ill figure it out. <3
 
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