As the customer, how do you treat the "1 plat undercut" in bazaar?

You people paying more for some philosophical reason completely baffle my brain.

Agreed. I have way more things to worry about than carrying out some social justice in the bazaar for 1pp. I sort by cheapest, I buy that.

As someone else said, that one will sell and then yours will sell next. If everyone is 1pp below you then the price has moved and you're overpriced.

To a certain extent, sometimes the 1 plat undercut is a good thing.

If you think about a product with a high turnover rate, people who undercut your price by a large sum often erode the price to the point where you may get thousands less than had someone just undercut you by 1pp, and then you sell your item right after at 1pp more.

I see your point about it being annoying, but even within MMOs there are some advanced economics practices occurring. There are positive and negative effects of stepping in to stem this type of behavior.

Depends on the item though. For a drop from a named, where the supply is relatively finite, undercutting - by whatever amount - isn't that big a deal.

For trade-skilled items, being undercut by even a plat can be a big problem if people always go to the under-cutters. Let's say your main trade is power sources or some other consumable. Let's say that you sell them for 2200, but some guy comes up selling them for 2199. So you match him at 2199, then he undercuts again to 2198; then you match and he undercuts again . . . It's not like 'OK, mine will be the second one sold' - assuming that he is willing to run around doing the legwork he won't run out.

Maybe great for buyers, but all too often I've seen those bots where as soon as I've decided '@#$* it, I'll just take these off the market for a bit,' and I check again in an hour and see that the bot has marked them up to 4k or some ridiculous price.

[Yes, I have some emotional baggage on this. ]

And those bots will come buy you out because they have 10+ traders, and the trader inventory resources, cause they know you can't farm or make the stuff fast enough before they can sell it off. Stick with pricing really close to other traders for that reason alone, and filter for lowest price and buy the lower price trader. Nothing you can do about bad game design but counter it by pricing relatively close to another trader, and NEVER selling to buyers. Unfortunately, people learn the hard way like I did.

Instead of just matching him why dont you undercut him by 10%? Then if he undercuts you again you knock another 10% off. Eventually you will come to a price where your competition doesnt want to go any lower. That is the correct market price. You were too high before.

I personally always try to buy the lowest priced item, but if it's 1 plat less, I will favor the guy with the higher price, just on principal.

I will also regularly buy from someone who only has 1 or 2 of an item in the case of stacks or multiples, as opposed to the guy that has 300, even if the guy with less wants slightly more. My theory is, if guy x is selling 2 glowing cantrips at 30k, and guy y is selling 20 at 29k, the guy that is asking 30k probably needs the profit more.

That's how my mind works anyway. And as a seller I always try to price items in the middle of items currently available, or about 5% as mentioned below the highest, and I rarely reset the price even if the other seller undercuts my price.. Eventually the item will sell, who's in a hurry.

The way I think about it is the way I shop for groceries. I'd rather support the average joe (like me) who puts their trader up when their mule gets full and doesn't try to intentionally corner the market by buying everything up.

On every server there are a few traders who buy/corner/resell and do nothing but that, 24/7/365, and I think it's dumb, but to each their own. I'd rather pay 1% more to some trader I don't recognize on the off chance it's an actual player and not a bazaar perma person who never does anything but sit there and not actually "play the game".

Maybe that *IS* how they "play the game". Not sure how to break it to you but some people play MMOs for the tradeskilling/economics aspect. Some play for the social aspect. Some play to advance their characters and explore content. Your position that such a player isn't an "actual player" is completely invalid.

No, it's not invalid...The way they are "playing" does nothing but screw people over that are actually playing the real game.

That 'price where your competition doesn't want to go any lower' is 1, if you are dealing with a bot program that has been sloppily set up. (It happens - and can be great fun if you recognize a bad bot and manipulate it before the owner realizes his/her/its mistake.) We can debate whether or not '1' is a 'correct' market price in terms of economic theory, but I don't think that '1' is a realistic price for an item that costs 1200-1500 per attempt with multiple chances at failures.

Usually I'll try to feel out if I am dealing with a person or a bot - real people don't reset prices with the rapidity or predictability of a bot. Then I'll decide whether I am OK with pricing as it is (usually the case with humans) or start dropping by 5-10% increments to feel out the bot's 'floor price' if it has one. Then I'll decide if I want to stay in the market.

It is interesting how the bazaar has a) reduced the 'opportunity cost' for trading (back in the days of EC, time spent buying and selling was less time spent adventuring and/or trade skilling - which I think encouraged both buyer and seller to 'reach a deal'), and b) supported proliferation of bot programs. Although I wouldn't have the time for it like I did 12+ years ago, I liked the freewheeling, Middle Eastern bazaar atmosphere of the EC tunnel days - less bots if nothing else.

Though there are bazaar bots who aren't actual players.

Unfortunately the best way to 'compete' with a bazaar bot is . . . another bazaar bot (i.e., break the EULA). The only other ways I've been able to figure out for dealing with a bot are a) relatively time intensive - constantly checking prices, etc., manually doing what the bazaar bot does when you would rather be doing other stuff in game, or b) withdraw from the market. Hence the frustration for some tradeskillers and others.

Totally agree with you that playing in the bazaar is one aspect of the game, that is "playing the game". BUT, when one individual has 2-3 buyers & 10+ traders, its not really playing the game when people with 1 trader can't compete with those traders/buyers, because we don't have 1000+ trader slots that the one individual is able to have access too. So certain individuals just control the whole market that way. In NO WAY IS THAT FAIR. Add to that, those people are able to keep their traders/buyers up 24/7 while if I only own 1 account , my account is held HOSTAGE by keeping a trader up. How is that good game design? But no way the EQ devs will change that, because that individual with 15-20 accounts up in bazaar is bringing them $150 a month in profit, or $1800 annually.

And SOE wants to hold your account HOSTAGE, they can change game design if they wanted too, to an auction house style system where everyone has equal opportunity , but if you look at how many traders are up in bazaar on each server about 250-300, probably 200 of which are permanent 24/7 traders/buyers, lets do the math...

200 traders up on average per server (i'll only count the blue servers, and not special rule set)

200 x 12 servers = 2400 traders
2400 traders x $10 per month = $24,000 per month
$24,000 x 12 months = $ 288,000

So $288,000 just of perma traders/platfarmers alone in bazaar. So in a way they welcome the platfarmers, its a revenue stream they would loose on average.

The real frustration is when you drop your price and the resellers just buy out your entire hard work whether it be a spell rune or item of a named or an item you spent hours tradeskilling, and they instantly corner the market for a few weeks, because not everyone has the opportunity to put up a trader, some of us actual enjoy playing other aspects of the game. So now they just sit there monopolizing the market for few weeks, till the supply in bazaar goes back up, and then the cycle just continues over and over. And all they had to do was click the "BUY" button on your trader, while you did all the heavy lifting for them. Why you all should learn to price extremely close to other traders and never sell to buyers period. Stuck with the worthless game design, it used to work when there wasn't 750,000 + tradable items and the population on servers used to be high enough that there were enough people competing, that 12 year game design doesn't work with so many tradable items in the game and not enough people putting up their traders/buyers to counter those type of behaviors.

Just like I do with most any other case of comparison shopping- I look for the lowest legal price because I don't see what is so righteous when it comes to bragging about paying more.

I guess the question comes down to whether you view the market as a finite game or as an infinite game.

As a tradeskiller I am constantly in the market and approach the market with more concern with impact on future moves.

I'm not a 'professional farmer.' I view drops as more of a one-off windfall, and approach buying and selling them as more of a finite game. (Unless the selling is being done by a known or suspected bot.)

I don't think it's bragging - just different approaches to the game.

This is basically what I meant. If someone wants to never leave the tutorial, they're still a "real player", they're just one who chooses to ignore the vast majority of the game. The same with the bazaar squatter.

I'd rather my plat goes to folks that play the rest of EQ versus a professional farmer, and thanks to krono it's easier than ever to convert plat to RL $.

Am sure there are some legit players who get off on cornering the bazaar, and that's obviously different from a pro farmer, but I'd still rather my purchase support go to neither of that type if possible.

Cornering the baz market is the equivalent of sitting at a mob's bind point 24/7/365 (hello, fear golems) and farming it endlessly so you can artificially inflate or control the price along with the supply. While all play styles are valid to a degree, there's a large difference in "can" vs. "should" as much of the community views it. Camping something you need or to make a quick buck tends to be viewed on just fine. Camping something endlessly and permanently to prevent others from getting it as much as getting the drop themselves is not viewed well, and understandably so.

Obviously the price would never drop to 1 since that would have required YOU to have priced it at 2. Seriously, even worst case with a bot program the price will only ever drop to the price where no one is willing to go lower and that is the correct market price.

Its kind of like an auction where the correct sale price is when no one is willing to bid higher, except in reverse. In a normal auction it may be annoying to be overbid by 1 but it happens, and the proper response is to up your bid to the point where you think he will stop it. If he is willing to go higher than you are then he wins, and he should win. In this case if he is willing to go lower than you then he wins, and he should win.

I could care less if the person selling the item is a content player or a farmer who has a banker up 24/7.

I will always pay the lowest price.

If all the farmers were removed from the game and the only people selling stuff were people who played the game for content,
there would be a hell of a lot less for sale and the prices would be thru the roof!

People selling will always try to get as much as possible, so I counter that by only buying from the lowest priced seller.

I have zero incentive to pay anything more.

Trust me, there have been cases where people running bots have neglected to set minimum prices - which leads to interesting situations when one knows that a bot will undercut a price no matter what. So I guess the "correct market price" was a tiny fraction of the cost to make something for what, about 10 seconds?

Got to love ''teachable moments."

I wouldn't mind if he does that - if it is an actual player there spending his time constantly checking prices on everything in their stock doing it, rather than a program.

The use of a program to do it, eliminating his time opportunity cost, seems a bit unsporting however - at least to many of us abiding by the EULA and not using bot programs to sell in bazaar.