Does Backpack.tf price items in USD correctly?

[TheVirtualEconomist]

So, I made this video.

 

 

Knowing youtube comments, It is hard to gauge exactly where the community fall on this topic, due to people blinding agreeing with me or being inexperienced with the subject in general. So, I figure it only makes sense to bring up this topic on the backpack.tf forums, where (most) everyone is quite experienced with trading and knows how backpack.tf functions. 

 

You may have noticed I've created a handy poll up at the top. It would be super helpful for me (and anyone else) if you would answer the questions after you watch the video. I know some questions might not be worded the best or this sample size might be biased (for example, I am sure most forums viewers would rather have a cash value that a scm value), but it still gives people something to go off of.

 

And of course, what are your thoughts on the subject?

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

We have discussed before that it would be far preferable for everything to be based off the dollar value of keys rather than refined, but it would be a huge re-write for the devs. Taking the key value as a constant is an interesting idea, but I'll let the trading mods and the devs comment on that one at length.

The paypal-derived vs scm value are already both displayed on profiles, the scm value coming from the value of marketable items themselves on the scm. 

[Apo]

I think items <1 key should be priced in USD based off of refined price in USD (Paypal).

 

I think items >1 key should be priced in USD based off of key price in USD (Paypal).

 

SCM funds are not real money.

[Happysedits]

here's my thought on ref suggestions issue what I already told you, rephrasing it here again for others to see

 

The keys prices and ref prices not making sense (1.95$ key) is because how people sell keys and refined, that's how they're priced by suggestors, when ref updates and key doesn't (or another way around), the value of ref changes but the keys don't if there are not enough sellers or the sellers just didn't update their price in the cash market to update it too, and that sometimes makes it unstable as hell. It was 1.70$ once. That's the issue, small market = hard pricing, everything is confusing.

 

Anyway I think this needs a change too, i like the idea of ''price keys at a constant value determined by the user and price refined metal as a fraction of this'' and ''Keep the current cash ref price (for items priced in refined) and add a way to vote on the cash value of keys (to represent the value of items price in keys)''

 

Keep the SCM out of cash market IMO. SCM is for people who want it super quick and doesn't care about the loss.

 

edit: also reason why keys are 1.95$ now is because that is slightly higher than marketplace.tf gives

marketplace.tf is dictator of prices for keys now

[TheVirtualEconomist]

We have discussed before that it would be far preferable for everything to be based off the dollar value of keys rather than refined, but it would be a huge re-write for the devs. Taking the key value as a constant is an interesting idea, but I'll let the trading mods and the devs comment on that one at length.

The paypal-derived vs scm value are already both displayed on profiles, the scm value coming from the value of marketable items themselves on the scm. 

 

Yeah, backpack.tf does display the SCM market value for items. My poll question is worded a little bit weird, but in essence I was asking if the the value used to calculate backpack value should be closer to the scm price of items.

 

I think items <1 key should be priced in USD based off of refined price in USD (Paypal).

 

I think items >1 key should be priced in USD based off of key price in USD (Paypal).

 

SCM funds are not real money.

 

I actually really like the simplicity of this. Although if something like this would be implemented, backpack.tf would need to make it very clear to people viewing their backpacks that this is a cash value. (to avoid the inevitable "why are my items valued so cheap" complaint from literally every trader new to bp.tf)

 

 

here's my thought on ref suggestions issue what I already told you, rephrasing it here again for others to see

 

The keys prices and ref prices not making sense (1.95$ key) is because how people sell keys and refined, that's how they're priced by suggestors, when ref updates and key doesn't (or another way around), the value of ref changes but the keys don't if there are not enough sellers or the sellers just didn't update their price in the cash market to update it too, and that sometimes makes it unstable as hell. It was 1.70$ once. That's the issue, small market = hard pricing, everything is confusing.

 

Anyway I think this needs a change too, i like the idea of ''price keys at a constant value determined by the user and price refined metal as a fraction of this'' and ''Keep the current cash ref price (for items priced in refined) and add a way to vote on the cash value of keys (to represent the value of items price in keys)''

 

Keep the SCM out of cash market IMO. SCM is for people who want it super quick and doesn't care about the loss.

 

edit: also reason why keys are 1.95$ now is because that is slightly higher than marketplace.tf gives

marketplace.tf is dictator of prices for keys now

 

Yeah, the fact that keys and refined are updated independently is the real cause of concern here, since it makes backpack values fluctuate quite unpredictably. Also, I think using the cash value of a key didn't really make much sense in the past (due to the high risk and the low amount of people who sold items for cash), but with keys being quite stable and accessible on marketplace.tf it makes more sense. 

[SpotlightR]

As far as I'm concerned, the cash value of anyone's backpack is an irrelevant number. The only integer that should matter to anyone regarding their backpack should be the key value, which is already as accurate as it's going to get, albeit not perfect. I personally don't think any changes should be made, at least not for now. There are more important issues to be fixed and features to be added that should precede any change regarding cash values of backpacks. 

[polar]

We know the current pricing based on refined is off, and we have known this for three years, ever since key values shot up in dollar value when Valve cracked down on carded keys (for a long time they were selling for ~$1.40-1.50 in paypal).

 

If people really want to fix dollar values of backpacks, the only solution right now would be to base refined currency suggestions on key dollar values and to divide the key dollar value by the current going rate of refined : keys. This is far from an ideal solution, but it is something we have taken into consideration in more recent suggestions. It's definitely not the only thing we think about when evaluating refined suggestions, but we do keep this in mind.

[Foamy the Fearsome]

I think the real question here is whether or not people really want an "accurate" USD price on their backpack. While it may be nice to see a 'cashout' value, it is going to be arbitrary no matter what way you put it, as there are quite some flaws that can and will cause discrepancies in the displayed value compared to the actual value (such as the fact that two hats priced at the same value may definitely not sell for the same amount of usd).

 

If it were to be an easy click-of-a-button type of fix, I would say yes to changing the USD dependence from ref to keys, as keys are evidently more stable to determine USD values than refined are. However, I doubt it would be a very useful endeavor, especially since as far as I understand, it will require a huge rewrite of the site's hardcoding. I am not proficient with high-level programming, so I cannot properly judge the time this will take, but I can assess the benefits it will have.

Consider the following analogy:
if in a country, everyone sells items for eggs, then in that country it would make sense to display the worth of sellable goods in eggs, as that is clearly used as common currency in that economy. Of course, if you want potatoes instead of eggs, you may be interested in the "potato" value of your stuff, but it is not very difficult for someone to manually calculate the egg:potato rate that he can get realisticly, and base their value off of that.

This may sound far fetched, but in essence it already applies on me. I live in the European Union, and I do not use USD. A value in USD only tells me something because I (roughly) know the rate at which USD goes compared to the Euro, but I need to do a manual conversion anyway.

 

In the TF2 economy, the only universally relevant currency for anything I would be interested in (Im not really a metal trader, I essentially only focus on unusuals) is the key value of tems. Especially considering the first point made, having an USD value does not give a proper insight in my actual liquidity in terms of TF2 goods.

I realize that for a variety of reasons my stance on this matter may not be the most interesting one:
- As said, I do not use USD as main currency, so the number by itself does not mean anything to me anyway
- I only actively trade in keys or items priced in keys, so the refined price of my bp or my items, or even the refined price of a key dont really influence me
- For my backpack appraisal I generally prefer to stick to keys rather than real-life tangible currencies (even if it had an € converter), as I believe that that speaks more than anything else
- I am not really concerned by or interested in the aggregate value of everything in my bp in general, let alone in USD, since a lot of what's in it are items I intend to keep. The value they hold does not influence my financial position at all. While it is a fun gimmick to display the total value, it is not something with a financial significance to me for that reason

- I am not a dev so I have no idea what their side of the story is, but since it has not been changed despite frequently being brought up by various parties, I assume that when they say "huge rewrite", that it is something not worth undertaking.

TL/DR:
- To the question: "are USD prices and values currently displayed properly?" my answer is "no"
- To the question: "should something be done about it?" my answer is also "no"

Most other questions are either on par with the overhead answers displayed above, or my answer to them would be "I dont care".

As a last remark I would like to say that having a discrepancy in the origin of your dollar conversion rate (the PP rate and the SCM rate) would seem odd to me, as it means that you get vastly different values depending on whether your backpack mainly consists of high-value items or items priced under a key. metalbankers and unique item traders would be left with inferior backpack values compared to unusual or aussie traders if something like that would be implemented.

[Mengh.]

Been pretty busy with A-Levels and programming a charting engine for the visualisation of markets, but fortunately, got some free time.

 

Anyhow, I'd definitely agree with the idea of allowing for users to price keys by their dollar value, seeing as how keys are the main primary asset that is traded off in Paypal transactions with their high volume in sales, and that is definitely worth using due to the significance of the price of keys.  As shown in refined ($ value) suggestions, there is not a lot of valid documented sales for them, and yet, they are used for a significant amount of the real world pricing here on Bp.tf.

 

Sure, as Teeny said, it's definitely long to code, having to change every instance where the refined dollar price is relied on, as well as to rewrite a great portion of the site. However, in the long-term, it would achieve a more accurate measure of one's backpack upon Backpack.tf. Whether they are willing to do this will depend on whether it is one of the developers' goals as to increase accuracy of prices, or just stick to the current system, and work on new and better features rather than optimising what has been done.

[Axle Change]

Sure, as Teeny said, it's definitely long to code, having to change every instance where the refined dollar price is relied on, as well as to rewrite a great portion of the site.

I don't really see how this is an issue to be honest. Even just being lazy in terms of backpacks, key values for backpacks already exist and could just be multiplied by a constant key value. Moreover in terms of items, this only affects items under a key because other items are already priced completely in keys. This doesn't necessarily need to change the entire coding, it could just change the display layer like how stacking classifieds works.

 

Edit: I din't say this but the idea is that changing the display layer but not backpacks doesn't matter if backpacks themselves just multiply based on the key value rather than adding prices.

[TheVirtualEconomist]

As far as I'm concerned, the cash value of anyone's backpack is an irrelevant number. The only integer that should matter to anyone regarding their backpack should be the key value, which is already as accurate as it's going to get, albeit not perfect. I personally don't think any changes should be made, at least not for now. There are more important issues to be fixed and features to be added that should precede any change regarding cash values of backpacks. 

 

The thing is, to me, the cash value of people's backpacks should be an irrelevant number. If backpack.tf is doing it's job correctly, the price of items shouldn't really matter that much becuase it is clear and doesn't change value arbitrarily. The real problem I have right now is the fact that it isn't clear. You have no idea how many people have horribly misconceived conceptions of the key to refined ratio, and I can trace almost all of them back to backpack.tf and how it values keys and refined. People think that buying keys and holding them will make them profit because backpack.tf shows their value increase whenever keys increase in refined. However, due to the inverse relationship of keys and refined, this will never make them profit. Then, these same people freak out when their backpack value is ruined a week or two later by refined going down in price. Tbh, I shouldn't of even needed to make the first part in my series, but due to how many people where utterly confused by backpack.tf, It had to be made.

 

I also think it's interesting you bring up dev prioirties. In the last two years, I have seen backpack.tf get so many upgrades in terms of functionality, and we have only the devs to thank for that. While I don't know what issues and features you are referring too, I really don't think there are very many major features that need to be added to backpack.tf. Just as backpack.tf has gotten buy orders, improved classifieds, a new database, inventory tags, updated mod pricing, and much more, you know what the one thing that has remained eerily unchanged? How items are assigned monetary value. To me, it has been put on the backburner for ages and I fear nothing will ever change if the devs don't move it to the top of the stack soon.

 

We know the current pricing based on refined is off, and we have known this for three years, ever since key values shot up in dollar value when Valve cracked down on carded keys (for a long time they were selling for ~$1.40-1.50 in paypal).

 

If people really want to fix dollar values of backpacks, the only solution right now would be to base refined currency suggestions on key dollar values and to divide the key dollar value by the current going rate of refined : keys. This is far from an ideal solution, but it is something we have taken into consideration in more recent suggestions. It's definitely not the only thing we think about when evaluating refined suggestions, but we do keep this in mind.

 

Yea, I had a feeling that was one way you worked out refined suggestions. If things remain unchanged internally, would it be a possibility for the rules of refined suggestions to change such that backpack.tf would favor a price that accurately represents the (refined x refined in a key) price instead of primarily sellers? I feel like it can be universally agreed that the small market for refined suggestions makes it hard to get an accurate price for items, and this would allow the mods more flexibility over the price of the key.

[cares]

I think the better solution here would be to price Refined partially off of keys, if not entirely. We handle it internally by appointing an item (currency) as the lowest denominator (usd). If in practice that denominator is largely dealt with in another item, then I think it's better to use that to price it (mostly) using that item instead.

 

Maybe a weird exception, but such is ref already.

 

It wouldn't really make sense to make keys the exception here, by allowing them to take multiple prices depending on the context. That would basically require a full rewrite of the site for no real purpose.