[LVS] Undercutting at the Market

[Raysun]

SneakySkeleton wrote :
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" Personally, I don't think the market has ever been a matter of the 'dominant player(s)'. However with undercutting, it will become so. "

Me : I don't know how can you be so sure that it "will". There always were different prices and it hasn't happened yet.
Please use "might" next time when stating an assumption.

SneakySkeleton wrote :
Where I feel this is contradictory is where you mention:
1. "If they want to sell their things - they can and will at their own price , and people will still buy it."
2. "If the players know the minimum price for the thing they're looking for the players that sell in higher prices will be less desirable in the market because the prices for things will be set in stone."

Me : 1. I state a situation in the current market. Glad it bothered you as a statement "If they want to sell their things - they can and may at their own price , and people might still buy it" - that's how it was first in my mind , but I changed it using your own tactics stating things will happen like I'm a prophet of some kind. "will" instead of "might" can be a crowd changer.
2. I state a situation in the future market tainted by minimum price.
Those are different situation cases, so they are meant to contradict.

Peace out.

[EliasRipley]

First of all I would like to applaud the effort of a Diamond Time Standard. I will be more focussed on that thread than this one, as to me, this appears to be the solution to a fairer market. With public farms, and private autos, the only real measure of any item can be time.

I didn't want to comment without experiencing the market as a seller.. so now if you head to the mob drop shop, you may buy gunpowder from me too. I decided to fill a box next to Ray's, and offer them at the same price as his. I did notice that he has a slightly cheaper stock in his personal shop, yet this is the benefit of having a personal shop.

I would suggest that the market is experiencing an inflation due to high volumes of stock. I would agree with Aravero's point that if players are monopolising by selling at a lower rate than the "Diamond Time Standard", then once their sales deplete, the market will rebalance.

I would be against strict pricing regulation at the market, however I would agree with AB, that we should have a rule which prevents free items. It's a market, not a soup kitchen. I think this rule should apply to ALL markets. We currently have a few freebies in the end XP farm I think. We don't even need a free food box, we have a starter farm.

I think we should think of ways to encourage the success of community markets, (player made / warp towns) yet that is a different issue altogether.

[Zedwick]

Please also note that I said Zriend or Guardian, as I was not sure which would be more prevalent in this scenario.

Just wanted to point out that we Guardians do not have a hand in the running of The Market, as that has been entrusted to the Zriends to run on behalf of the community. We stop by when server rules are broken (stealing, when mis-paying), Zriends would handle market rules/guidelines being ignored.

[Dax23333]

Interesting point about over inflation of stock Elias, I think you just hit the nail on the head.

There is so much stuff in the market, and low demand, that if the seller is paying attention the chest will always be in stock. At this point a higher priced chest will not receive sales as cheaper goods are available, and logically the customer wants the lower price. Sales of the more expensive chest can now be had in a couple of ways. First, buy up cheaper stock and resell. There seems to be a taboo against this. The second way is to post a lower price so customers go to your chest instead.

So overinflasion of stock would cause this... Too many sellers fighting over very few customers.

As for sneakys first statement, about how with undercutting there will be one dominant seller at the end. Let me explain as the point seems to have been missed. There is no might about it, it is the logical outcome.

So we start out with lots of sellers with high prices such that all of them are making a killing from sales. Somebody comes along with a lower price, and as the customers are not stupid and the market is small enough to look around, they buy from the Lower price and the higher price loses sales.

Unhappy with lost sales someone lowers thier price to complete and actually sell something. Another player might decide to leave at this point, unsatisfied with the profit made.

As long as people don't go and resell cheaper stock then this will loop around for a while, as we have seen on lvs already with the more popular items to sell. More and more people drop out because it isn't worth thier time, leaving very few players selling things at very low prices making it unprofitable for somebody coming in. These few players left could be considered dominant at this point.

If you require further evidence that this will happen look at real life business, in particular the dominance of supermarkets and large online retailers. The free market goes that way, favoring the large enterprise over the small.

Of course we have the added issue of all the items being the same. If you were to buy cheese you could get cheap but not that nice cheese from a supermarket, or get really nice cheese from a small cheese shop. Both have their advantages, but our market both shops sell items that are exactly the same, so the customer only shoots themselves in the foot by buying from the smaller and more expensive shop.

And with demand so low even buying people out to resel won't work that well as restocking is so quick and it is slow to sell things.