Why do people insist on killing prices?

Sometimes white hat players will cut prices even at a lost when others are profiteering. Some profit is not a bad thing but when you see people listing at 10x even 20x the cost to make something two types of people come out. Those that want to jump on the inflated costs to profit. Generally these people will keep the costs high as long as they can. Then you have the people that purposely undercut to drive prices down. At one time on my old server stim costs were out the roof. Talking 30-50k per proto-type stim. That is crazy. I actually leveled biochem up because I was tried of paying such high prices. Once I got to 300 and saw they were still so inflated I used the 30k to buy the diplomacy mats in stacks of 99. Then crafted and dumped them on the market for 12k per. I am sure some of the inflators bought mine out to resell at their inflated prices and others scooped them up at the bargain prices. I as still making enough that I could go buy stacks of mats and list another 20+ stims at 12k vrs the 40k others where wanting. It only took about 2 days before the "standard" cost for proto-type stims to drop down to the 12-15k range. To me that was a perfectly acceptable cost and the profiteers moved else where because even up to merges...I mean transfers proto-type stims never inflated back up where they had been.

Sure I was hated by some crafters for killing the market but they were pushing costs way to high so I crashed their market :P Saw the same thing happen shortly after 1.3 with the augment kits. They went from 250-300k per down to 65k in two days by someone else doing something similar.

The prices for Augments will remain high so long as people continue to buy them at an inflated cost. Your guild solution is they way to go if you wish to combat these prices, either internally or on a server-wide scale, but unless you can spread the items to the entire server population you won't be able to make a significant impact on the price as a whole.

The simple fact is there are too many people with an overabundance of credits in the game. This allows them to pay the inflated prices, thereby maintaining, or even raising, the price for the items; Skill Augments appear to be increasing in price on Jung Ma. Two weeks ago I sold some around the 100K mark, this week I was able to go as high as 186K, and that was undercutting the current top price by a good 10K. I craft for my guild mates at cost, of course, and free if they provide the mats, but otherwise I sell my items to fund other aspects of the game. As such I'm going to maximize my profits as best I can.

In fairness, I don't think you fully understand the situation with Augmentation Kits. No one was actively attempting to crash the market on them. Their availability simply increased; Augmentation Kits are Produced in a very short amount of time with readily-available and inexpensive components. This caused the market to naturally flood through normal competition, rather than some concerted effort to drop the price.

Well OP, there is another factor to consider and that is that blue 22's are almost 100K cheaper and the difference in the attribs is only one point. What guildies and others have started doing is buying all blues. It makes sense given the cost of aug kits and the actual augmentation. In short, there are other factors driving price points down.

You undercut someone by 1k. Yeah its called business but you dont have to be a total noob about it. I see people sell stuff for 109,999c after the highest one was 110,000c. If you want credits fast, put a cheaper price. You're much better selling it for 20k less than 1k less in the long run

Lol. I always sell my stuff at 10 to 20k below the lowest price on the vendor to ensure I get a sale. i never buy my mats off the GTN. I actually go out myself and aquire what I need. If it isn't something that can be gathered in the wild, then I will do the crew skill mission to get what I need. Some of those resource prices are ridiculous and I refuse to pay them. Especially when I have just about every crafting/gathering skill maxed out. So every thing I do sell is pretty much 85 to 95% profit depending on my luck with crew skill missions.

Hell. The reason why I even have all of those crafting skills is so I won't get prison-***** by the gougers by making my own stuff. I have no problems with somebody trying to make a profit. But when people go out of their way to try and extort you for every credit that they can? Damn right I'll undercut you and won't feel one bit of pity for you lol.

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What I read from the OP was that he was reducing prices to beat his competition and someone else came along and beat him and now the OP is upset that his revenue stream was reduced. But the OP is also guilty of reducing his competitions revenue stream.

You just can't have it both ways.

Crafters and resellers (if they are smart) will consider sunk cost + material investment and current market value. What remains is revenue. As sunk cost (investment which cannot be refunded to the investor, which in an MMO is usually a factor of time) is reduced as players find more efficient ways to obtain materials, and material cost is reduced, market value will also be reduced as market supply increases. When a new item, like augment slots for example, hits the market, supply is limited and sunk costs and material investment is high, thus market value is high and the revenue stream is high.

After 1.2 I spent 2 full days searching for all mat spawns for Magenta crystals. Sunk cost was extremely high. Now schems are in high supply and materials are in medium to high supply. Critical and Endurance crystals have dropped from 1.5 mil a pop to 130k a pop. The revenue stream is drastically reduced, but my sunk costs are lower and my materials cost is lower. Whereas my revenue stream on the Power +41 variety is still high as the schem comes from a high level world boss and so supply is still low.

The problem in crafting is one found in all areas of economy for new products and it shows that the market economy in SWTOR is working as intended. Crafters need to stay on the cutting edge of new products or high demand products. Those that must have the best as soon as it is available will pay higher prices and crafters will make high revenue creds. Consider that mods from Campaign gear are going for 500k a piece currently. In six months time when more crafters have RE'd those schems those same items will be 100k.

My appologies to the OP for his revenue stream being reduced, but that is simply the market working as intended. Jump on the next high demand product, currently purple color crystals and campaign mods and you'll be right back on top.

This. You apparently started the undercutting. They were apparently willing to match your price. Me, personally, I play often enough that I'm fine putting things up for short duration and am "fair" enough that I simply rematch your new lower price if you undercut me. But I'll admit that I'm tempted when somebody like you starts a price war, to simply cut to the chase and immediately drop to the lowest price I'm wiling to sell for. That's apparently where it's heading anyways.

And P.S. as to the 130k for an augment. Mine are currently on sale for ~200k. If I run out of stock/mats, I bump up the price when I can finally make more. If I have too many mats, I drop the price.

Even with many of my slicers running parts missions, I'm having trouble stayin in stock. So price keeps going up.

I believe that's basically known as supply and demand.

(edit: And P.S. since I have all the augmentor crafts covered, I put them up for sale at the same price. if one doesn't sell at that price, then, well. I don't have to replace it. Now sure, I could simply keep track of which ones sell at a lower price, and then simply not waste my mats on those ones anymore, but if/when enough people do that, the cost for 'em will presumably go back up to the same as the others... and then they may end up buying the ones I've just been leaving there.

Sure, but then, you're exploting those quest givers to get the credits from them. A lot of the crafting in this game is probably more "work" than doing those dailies, due to how RE works.

I understand people undercutting, what I don't understand is people undercutting by throwing 2 pages of items up at the undercut price lol. That's not smart as people start undercutting you and the price doesnt have a chance to recover above the flood point like it normaly would as it fluctuates. You're basically lowering the bar for everyone including yourself. Putting auctions up one at a time gets you fast sells and maximezes your profit.