Ways to stop the INFLATION

[REMOVE KEBAB]

How often do you open backpack.tf and see a new key price suggestion? I see them almost every day. Some of them are fully logical, proof-based and so on. But the majority is like OMG KEYS SHOULD NOT COST SO MUCH I HAVE DEGREE IN ECONOMICS VOLVO NERF PLS.

Easy rep would you say. I would say the same, but everytime I click on X, my heart stops beating for a moment. I’ve been playing TF2 since 2011. The keys were 2.33 at that time. I remember my first hat, first key, first bill’s. And when I look at current price I almost want to cry. But listen. I don’t want to look as another whiner. I fully understand that it’s not just “stupid highballers, who want to ruin tf2’s economyâ€. The main reason of this is called INFLATION.

 

Let’s talk about it more precisely. Keys are bind to a certain real world money amount (for example, 2.50 USD) . Metal is not. Real world money is not unlimited (unless you are a daughter of Bill Gates), in-game currency IS. This has led to there being TOO MUCH METAL. The more the metal - the less the price, while keys’ price is close to a constant. You don’t have to be economics expert to understand that this will have effect on keys’ price in metal: THE MORE METAL THERE IS, THE MORE PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO GIVE FOR KEY, because key is connected to real world money. The second deciding factor is: More and more people consider TF2 as a trading simulator and not a game. Earlier majority of people were buying cosmetics TO wear and they didn’t give a damn about real world value of their hats, and minority was buying cosmetics to resell. Now the situation is different : The majority is buying cosmetics to resell, and minority to wear. (Prove me if I’m wrong). These two factors contribute to the inflation of keys. But what I have written this text for? Oh, yes, this has gone too far. More and more people cash out nowadays, because the future of TF2â€s economy doesn’t seem really bright. The reason behind this is that it’s harder to make profit now. Why? The answer is inflation of metal.

 

And my main point is: I don’t want KEYS to cost less. I want to strengthen the METAL. Not much we can do about this. But Valve can.

 

How to deal with inflation:

a) Release an update with lots of hat crafting.

 

Quite simple. New update means lot of new hats. Lots of new hats means a lot of crafting. Newly added hats usually have a craft number. Such hats cost more than regular ones. In attempt to get one a lot of metal and craft hats are wasted. Moreover, new hats usually cost quite a lot (especially in the first days after the update) so its not surprising that people want to craft. How are keys affected? Simple. To craft you need metal. You get metal from selling your key for it. The more people want to sell keys, the lower the price. Summer update (Love and War) has stopped inflation for a while, in august there was a significant drop in price (can’t really name the reason of this, possibly an aftermath of summer update) My hopes are on winter update (End of The Line) that will possibly lessen the price.

 

b ) Dota-like offerings

 

New Bloom update has featured an interesting ability: you could put items from your inventory to a special “boxâ€, and these items could not be retrieved back. During the event these items were collected twice and players were awarded with new sets, tools and couriers. This was quite an efficient measure, lots of sh*tty commons and crates were “burntâ€. A lot of people were disappointed with the loot they got, Gabe refused to give valuable items to those who “offeredâ€.

 

c) New “Golden Wrenchâ€

 

Engineer update featured an ability to craft golden wrench. During the uprate, every time you crafted you had a small chance to get “golden wrench†as bonus. Metal craft was suspended in order to prevent “farmingâ€. Personally I think that we really need such an update. Of course it should feature not the wrench, but something different, for example “golden hat†or something like that. But instead of wrench, this items should be made tradeable to increase the amount of people willing to get this item. The limit should be the same - 100 or a bit more, but the item can only be received as a result of hat-to-hat or metal-to-hat crafting. Just imagine the amount of metal wasted on this

 

d) Add new function to refined metal Seriously, metal is almost useless. The only thing we can do with it is to craft hats and trade. Craft hats and trade. Craft and trade. Infinite loop. A new ability should be added to refined metal. For example MVM ticket craft. 3 ref to 1 ticket. In order not to ruin the economy this recipe should be allowed to use only one time on one account. Of course, this will lead to a lot of new tickets, and new MVM-update is a must in this case. This measure will possibly bind refined to real money but not for too long

 

Conclusion

I hope you guys share my thoughts on this problem and enjoyed my little article. Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language. Maybe someone from Valve will read this and at least one of this measures will be implemented in the next major update :3 Post your thoughts below, maybe someone will suggest another way to stop the inflation of metal.

P.S I dunno why, it doesnt let me upload pictures

[Seminal Inhalation]

 

--

 

We hear the same crap day after day after day.

[♥Prof. Sugarcube♥]

You copy-pasted this from Reddit.

[OverduePixels]

At first I thought this was just another whining without any thoughts given to it but yes I do agree with you and something really needs to be done about metal. Otherwise, keys will continue to rise as much as buyers are willing to pay and then stabilize. How far it will rise is up to buyers at the moment. If Valve does something, we will see a change and we have when the Bread box update came out temporarily and price of keys stayed down for a month or two because of that again in terms of metal.

[PinkiePie]

You copy-pasted this from Reddit.

[Seminal Inhalation]

At first I thought this was just another whining without any thoughts given to it but yes I do agree with you and something really needs to be done about metal. Otherwise, keys will continue to rise as much as buyers are willing to pay and then stabilize. How far it will rise is up to buyers at the moment. If Valve does something, we will see a change and we have when the Bread box update came out temporarily and price of keys stayed down for a month or two because of that again in terms of metal. troll'd u, i lied.

FTFY

[Ixenzo]

[OverduePixels]

You copy-pasted this from Reddit.

 

Haha...Really? I hardly visit there so I don't know. Link to it? 

[harsheldon]

GJ on copy paste if its true.

[REMOVE KEBAB]

LOL. guys, i am the author of the article on reddit,I just copypasted it here

[Seminal Inhalation]

LOL. guys, i am the author of the article on reddit,I just copypasted it here

And just like on reddit, nobody cares. The soup rice is reel.

[TheMCBros99]

Blah blah TF2 economy... Blah blah you can't afford keys now... Blah blah you got fired... Blah blah we don't give a damn

[Prince Lowell]

tl;dr

[grimdercell]

Unlike the other bogus "economist" that you see doing false key suggestions every day, I am actually a legit Business Economics student, and all I can tell you is that:

 

 

Let Valve handle it by themselves.

 

 

They are a business entity, they know what they are doing, and they have their own chief economist supervising changes in the virtual economy. Suggesting the same thing as what others are suggesting every single day isn't going to make Valve change their update plans.

 

 

Also, a lot of people never seem to realize something, refined metal was never created by Valve to be used as an alternative to get Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys. 

 

 

d) Add new function to refined metal Seriously, metal is almost useless. The only thing we can do with it is to craft hats and trade. Craft hats and trade. Craft and trade. Infinite loop. A new ability should be added to refined metal. For example MVM ticket craft. 3 ref to 1 ticket. In order not to ruin the economy this recipe should be allowed to use only one time on one account. Of course, this will lead to a lot of new tickets, and new MVM-update is a must in this case. This measure will possibly bind refined to real money but not for too long

 

I don't see why they would want to allow MVM tickets to be crafted in the first place when they are earning profit from sales of it at 0.99 cents each. 

[Spotty™]

Tl;dr

[MusicalEclipse]

tl;dr

[♛ AlphaOmega ♛]

Tl;dr

 

Keys are high, so what? If you are still complaining about it after 2 years thats sad.

 

If people spend their time playing with the economy as it is instead of whining, they wouldnt have to complain about key prices because they would have a bp that rises with the key values.

 

i get that it hurts small time traders, but if they worked hard enough, they would do just fine.

[xTH3RM4Lx]

cannot stop

 

never

[Spotty™]

Keys are high, so what?

I see what you did there mate XD

[jelly jiggler]

Would been a good idea if strangifiers and fabricators cost ref instead of robo parts and special weps. But someone made a good point valve wants keys to be high.

[Gren]

Would been a good idea if strangifiers and fabricators cost ref instead of robo parts and special weps. But someone made a good point valve wants keys to be high.

 

Valve doesn't want keys to be high.  For Valve, a key costs 2.49 from the store, that's all they have to care about.  Look at their moves to increase the value of ref (or uses for ref is a better term) as a way to appease the masses, nothing else. 

[Mitten]

 

You copy-pasted this from Reddit.

 

Does that make his point any less relevant?

[LookAtMyChicken]

Fuck it I'm making a video this weekend if we dont get an update today.

 

Everyone is saying the same shit and I'm tired of saying it here myself too. I'm just gonna link people to the video.

 

Some are making some valid points.

 

TL;DR version:

 

Let valve fix it (if they even give a shit since metal/hats aren't SCM marketable)

We need a ref sink. (breadboxes)

We need chem sets/collectors sets as there are too many of certain items in the game (bill's hats, earbuds)

Something WORTH crafting? (besides craft numbers)

 

Fixed.

[F CHARLIE]

@grimdercell

The economist no longer works for them unless they hired a new one there is no position like that at valve. They already have the expertise they need.

 

@alpha omega

Things like marketable stranges and scrap.tf item exchange makes it difficult for new traders. Also, the more work one has to do to trade profitably the worse it is for economy as new traders will be disueded from trading. This is not real life. People can opt out without harming themselves. In order for tf2 to continue being profitable valve must keep fresh interest in the game. They mostly do well. Some updates effect high tier traders others help low tier traders but they should do more to make low level tradin easier to keep players/traders flowing into the system.

 

 

In general, I have always felt they must keep game play fresh. I like the asteroid map for example. Mvm should receive changes and updates as well. Keeping it fresh will attract and maintain player bases that serve as buyers. There are usually more traders than buyers and we can't just trade against each other.

[Trianon]