#¤%#¤ people undercutting prices!

[Cigarskunk]

Originally posted by Eumerin
Heh.

He also didn't mind making a buck off of it. More power to him.

All of the Robin Hoods still make a buck off of whatever market they're crashing.

And the market responded. Prices dropped. People didn't quit selling the fishing rods. They dropped their prices instead. I think he still continues to sell them, too.

When you do something like this, it doesn't make it right just because you didn't put EVERYONE out of business. Yes, prices dropped due to the fact that no one could sell if the person who's intentionally crashing the market is on often enough.

Yes, I know the old excuse that it's going to happen eventually, but why accelerate it?

That's the way the market is supposed to work, however. He was poor. It wasn't as if he could afford to buy the various fishing rods for sale and sell them at one plat per. He simply decided that 1500pp was too much for the item in question. I don't know what he dropped the price to, but I'm sure its still more than I make off of a single charge of KEI looting fs weapons and phosphorous powder in LGuk.

Apples and oranges - the fact that the rods still sold at the higher price indicates that the market was doing just fine at that price. High level fishing is a rare skill and getting the planer forages is not something that everyone can afford to take the time to do - one or two an hour of foraging at best is what these boards are reporting - so having a rare item with a rare skill *DOES* make the rod worth what those who are selling it for are charging.

He had a druid and a second box, so getting the required items was simply a matter of patience. And he could make a tidy profit from it, especially since his fishing skill was already maxed from other activities.

Whoever can bring the goods to market for the least amount of money makes the sale.

There you go - someone who doesn't have to put much in the way of real time and effort into the process destroying yet another earning potential for other tradeskillers who do have to sit around in PoG foraging all day in order to bang out a few rods for sale. Sigh - why can't he park himself on PoJ instead and just forage justice fruit all day and dump that on the bazaar - atleast that way he'd be productive and actually help tradeskillers instead of hurting them?

If the market were selling cultural armor for 1,000,000,000pp, and someone came along and provided it for a tenth of that price, that would be their right.

Yes, it is thier right, but is it right to do? OK, so item X is going for 1 billion plat a pop in the bazaar - why can't this person be happy with shaving 5-10% off of the price instead of 1000%? Maybe because item X is hard to get the raw materials for and can only be made via a rarely skilled up tradeskill?

I'm sorry, but I've yet to encounter one of these Robin Hood tradeskillers who didn't give the real impression that they were taking advantage of thier skill level and/or advantages over the majority of players just to corner a market for thier own personal gain.

Remember, the robber barons and Japan both claimed that thier monopolies were for the good of the consumers as well.

[Celdil]

In the case of the 1 billion plat item being sold for 1/1000th, I would suggest that if the 100,000 price is still profitable, than 1000 times that price is probably a bit excessive, and the market would alter to correct that anyway.

Is the guy really Robin Hood, or is he just recognizing an opportunity to break into a market with a high profit margin? Yes, I know that the stated reason he broke into the market was because he thought the price was too high. But I would wonder if that was just phrasing when in fact he went in because he recognized the potential?

On Tarew Marr, the prices for Fishing Poles currently hover around the 950 mark. If you shop well in the Bazaar and can make all your own subcombines, you can produce one at 400p cost of materials (100p Oak, 75p Egg, 84p Sandalwood). If the average price for them was still up around 1500, I'd suspect that a number of people would recognize the money making potential and enter the market. As it is, that price seems pretty consistent.

The argument can be made that overpricing an item is only asking for people to enter in and undercut, so start it at a reasonable spot and Robin Hood won't have a reason to come after ya. But that cycles back to how much profit margin is reasonable, and how different people place a different value on their time!

[Eumerin]

Originally posted by Cigarskunk
All of the Robin Hoods still make a buck off of whatever market they're crashing.



When you do something like this, it doesn't make it right just because you didn't put EVERYONE out of business. Yes, prices dropped due to the fact that no one could sell if the person who's intentionally crashing the market is on often enough.

Yes, I know the old excuse that it's going to happen eventually, but why accelerate it?



Apples and oranges - the fact that the rods still sold at the higher price indicates that the market was doing just fine at that price. High level fishing is a rare skill and getting the planer forages is not something that everyone can afford to take the time to do - one or two an hour of foraging at best is what these boards are reporting - so having a rare item with a rare skill *DOES* make the rod worth what those who are selling it for are charging.



There you go - someone who doesn't have to put much in the way of real time and effort into the process destroying yet another earning potential for other tradeskillers who do have to sit around in PoG foraging all day in order to bang out a few rods for sale. Sigh - why can't he park himself on PoJ instead and just forage justice fruit all day and dump that on the bazaar - atleast that way he'd be productive and actually help tradeskillers instead of hurting them?



Yes, it is thier right, but is it right to do? OK, so item X is going for 1 billion plat a pop in the bazaar - why can't this person be happy with shaving 5-10% off of the price instead of 1000%? Maybe because item X is hard to get the raw materials for and can only be made via a rarely skilled up tradeskill?

I'm sorry, but I've yet to encounter one of these Robin Hood tradeskillers who didn't give the real impression that they were taking advantage of thier skill level and/or advantages over the majority of players just to corner a market for thier own personal gain.

Remember, the robber barons and Japan both claimed that thier monopolies were for the good of the consumers as well.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that there's profit, and there's profit. He didn't bring the prices down to ridiculously low levels (though admittedly that's a judgement call). He still makes a big chunk of change off of each sale - and as I mentioned, its plenty more money than I'd make farming a decently lucrative dungeon in a few hours.

And the argument about "taking advantage of the majority of players" is laughable. While he dualboxes at times, he's hardly the only person to do so. The ones taking advantage of the majority of players are those who are able to forage their own supplies and push the prices up. 400p for supplies isn't too bad of a price, but the simple fact of the matter is that on my server, when I searched for the supplies for myself, they simply were not available for sale. I couldn't make the rod not because I didn't have the ability to craft it, and not because I couldn't accompany a raid to a dangerous place (not that PoG would be dangerous to my character), but because I would never be able to get the required supplies for my character (my character has a high fishing skill, as well, although its not maxed quite yet). The limiter on the supplies is that most characters don't have a button labeled 'forage'.

If anyone is taking advantage of the majority of players, its the foragers (not that you can blame them).


And since no one has complained about the price of fishing rods suddenly being 'too low' on my server, I suspect that no one else thinks the price is too low, either.




And on the subject of lower prices and guildmates, another of my guildmates, who had been farming AC for a few weeks, decided to take a break recently. Apparently he'd been getting complaints because he was effectively flooding the market with acrylia, which was causing the price to go down.

Its unfortunate that a similar thing can't happen with hopper hides. On any given day, you're lucky to even see a superb hopper hide for sale, and the last time I checked (a guildmate looted one and asked what the price was while I was in the bazaar), there was one for sale somewhere between 3-400pp.

[Kytelae]

Oh I can still make a profit on them, though I wasn't selling them at 1500. They had already dropped below 1000 on Xev. I forage all my own stuff, I can port to Feerott for spiderling silks, all my needed skills are plenty high enough to make my own... if I really cut it fine, and don't buy anything but sandalwood and jars of acid, I can cut my costs to under 90pp each. Of course, that's IF you don't count the cost of time spent foraging, when I could instead be hunting stuff that pays real money. But since I can forage in the background now, while doing other things, I try to bang out a few rods a week to help support the costs of my tailoring.

What prompted me to respond in this thread was that I recognized the behavior the original poster reported: someone so determined to get EVERY SALE that they are dropping their prices by one plat no matter what price you set. So if everyone is selling at 900pp, they are at 899, and if everyone is at 800, they are at 799. If they can keep up a large enough inventory, they can grab nearly every sale, rather than just taking some sales and letting others get some sales too. It's a hyper-competitive nature that I personally don't like at all.

Anyway, though it's annoying I can still profit. I have a stack of planar oak now and when he starts to really bug me I make rods and drop the price to 600 plat. A nice bonus for folks who really need them - IF they can get one before he comes to buy me out so he can put the price back up to 900. I'm hoping that if I can put enough inventory up myself, he won't be able to do that.

Too bad, though, for the folks whose items I would buy when the price was higher - picking up dragon eggs and silks in the bazaar was more attractive when the price was higher. I think the compulsive price-cutting is an extremely anti-social behavior, and nothing will make me like it.

[Sylphan]

It's not so unusual to find a bunch of solstise robes on a vendor in PoK after a patch. I find that quite depressing, but that's the way it is. If they're on vendors it becomes nearly impossible to get very much for them in the bazaar.

Fishing rods are an entirely different story. They're not used for skillup. When I saw them selling for 2500 and the branches for 50pp I jumped in the market, and when I saw them selling for 950 and the branches for 200 pp I stopped. I think that's the way most everyone looks at that market, but of course different people have different ideas about the minimum profit margin they'll accept.

Then there's ethereal swatches, ethereal sheets, ethereal studs... all that Ornate stuff. These are used for skillup a little bit, but mostly they're like fishing rods. There are these two jokers who have started undercutting. One always makes his price 2 gold less than the competition, and the other always makes his 5 gold less than the competition. They raise their prices up and down as other traders come and go, always undercutting by a tiny margin (but ignoring eachother). Other than these two people (who only started selling when ornate drops increased), all the smiths charge 200pp per sheet all the time. Always. The tailors, though, have their prices all over the place, but usually between 100pp and 300pp, as some try to sell high while others try to sell fast. (That's a common theme over the years on my server by the way, smiths often collude/cooperate/agree, tailors almost never do). But these two are more annoying than normal (2 gp? sheesh) and some tailors have taken to warring on them. Lowering their prices when those two idiots are around and raising their prices back to normal when they're not, or just undercutting them by one plat if they're afk -- trying to make sure that everyone can make a profit *except* those two idiots. And even looking up what other items are on their traders and beating those prices too. It's rather amusing sometimes to see everyone else is selling for 199 plat while their price is 199 pp 5 gp. It doesn't entirely work because those two always undercut again (their predictability is what makes this possible), but at least they sell less and make small profit margins. I hope it works... I'd like to think that their tactics ruin the market only temporarily, not permanently.

[Pakks]

As someone who does not mind doing a little farming from time to time I have a question does it make me evil if I under cut prices so people who need my supplies for tradeskills don't have to pay as much, think hides silk swatches and leather padding ect, or am I doing a good thing for the tradeskill community?
Pakks

[Kytelae]

I think most of the tradeskillers would adore you for that attitude. However, you might just see your stuff grabbed by another merchant, who will just keep it and raise the price. I see a lot of that going on; people try to capture the market on supplies to keep the prices high.

[Cigarskunk]

Originally posted by Pakks
As someone who does not mind doing a little farming from time to time I have a question does it make me evil if I under cut prices so people who need my supplies for tradeskills don't have to pay as much, think hides silk swatches and leather padding ect, or am I doing a good thing for the tradeskill community?
Pakks

LOL - the folks trying to bend the tradeskillers over would certainly object, but the rest of the community would be happy enough.

That's the biggest problem us tradeskillers face - we're being assaulted on four sides.

To our front we've got the pharmers gouging the heck out of us for the raw materials we need to make things.

To our rear we've got the PLers who are dumping on the market just to pay for the skill ups so they can use tradeskill X for one quest.

To either side we've got the get-rich-quick types who only view tradeskills as a way to make a fast plat and have neither love nor care for the community.

And in our very own ranks we've got folks who think that "we're charging too much" for our hard earned products and then proceed to slash our own throats and burning bridges for up and comming tradeskillers by knocking prices down to whatever they consider "reasonable."

It's a wonder that any of us can still make an honest plat now adays.

[Draggar]

Why do I keep on thinking of Sandra Bernheart's (sp?) monologue near the end of Hudson Hawk?

"Stock markets will crash crash! World economies will crumble crumble!"

[Kalavas]

Any market where a greater than zero economic profit is made will continue to attract new entrants until the point is reached where no economic profit is made.

(Economic profit being selling price, less all tangible and intangible costs)

This favors people with low intangible costs, ie. people who don't value their time highly.

It isn't right, it isn't wrong, it just is.

In real life an economist would define market failure as a market where selling price is greater than the marginal cost of production. How many markets in EQ have NOT failed in this way?

[Velurian]

Originally posted by Kalavas
Any market where a greater than zero economic profit is made will continue to attract new entrants until the point is reached where no economic profit is made.

Not quite a complete statement.

Any perfectly competitive market where a greater than zero economic profit is made will continue to attract new entrants until the point is reached where no economic profit is made.

Virtually no market is truly perfectly competitive (because of barriers to entry, differentiated products, etc.), though some come close (RL farming, for example).

[Doebi]

Originally posted by Cigarskunk

When you do something like this, it doesn't make it right just because you didn't put EVERYONE out of business. Yes, prices dropped due to the fact that no one could sell if the person who's intentionally crashing the market is on often enough.

Yes, I know the old excuse that it's going to happen eventually, but why accelerate it?

and later

Originally posted by Cigarskunk
To our front we've got the pharmers gouging the heck out of us for the raw materials we need to make things.

I love this forum. In the same day/thread I can get lambasted for charging too much for raw materials AND bashed for selling my products too low.

[Kronepsis]

Well, here's a perfect example of what Cigarskunk is talking about.

Spend 540 plat for Acrylia Studded Mask Materials. About 240 for the small pieces of Acrylia, and 300 (!) for the hide.

Sell Acrylia Studded Mask for 10 plat.

...

[Kytelae]

Been there, done that

[Ndaara]

*gets out her dead horse beating stick and joins in with a wicked cackle*