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Do you guys feel like trading bots are ruining the economy?


Soju

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Don't get me wrong, I've made a lot of profit from these bots. It's nice to be able to buy or sell any item INSTANTLY for around the bp.tf price, but doesn't that make it really hard for newbies to compete? Even when I try to beat their prices they freakin" undercut me. 

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I think they are perfectly fine. Nobody should really be bothering with low tier trading imo. It is like picking cans of the street. Sure, you will make profit but the fuck is the point if a real job get you 100x more for your time.

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2 minutes ago, ksolis01 said:

similar thread

yeah but dead thread, doesn't hurt to resume discussion here

 

I dont think that bots in small quantities hurt, especially if they're limited to their host site, such as scrap.tf. These can set floors on the prices of certain items and are useful as long as their prices are relatively non-competitive. With the number of bots that are currently present I do think that it hurts profit for smaller traders, since most item margins are down to a scrap and who would trade with a user who won't instantly accept as opposed to a bot?

 

Also, as a bot owner, the more bots present the less effective each individual bot is. If there are 6 buy orders at the same price on item X, then you get roughly 1/6th of the sales of that item. When bot.tf releases a new wave of bots and one user lists a buy order at that price on item X, you suddenly go from 1/6th to 1/7th of the market. This is kind of off topic, but I'm wondering when bots will generally become diluted enough to not justify the cost, although I doubt that will be anytime soon.

 

Thirdly I think bots have changed how bptf lists prices on more commonly traded items, and given that they havent seemed likely to pass a new rule I guess they're fine with it. Now with bots buying and reselling in bulk you have prices on items with ranges, low end being what bots buy at and high end being what bots sell at. I do believe that this does sometimes cause deflation, but overall hardly has an impact given that the most competitive bots have more influence on the market than suggestions.

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I mean think about another game with a cash backed economy called entropia universe new players can sweat animals but when everyone is trying to sweat and everyone has sweat then who would wanna buy it ? At some point and maybe it will be in a long long time but bots will crash and become not worth the cost to run and that will cause less bots to stay running therefore making those users more profit

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1 hour ago, SpotlightR said:

I like to buy random stuff instantly.

Yeah me too, everyone does. But if everyone buys from bots then where does that leave the human traders? Even in online hat simulators we have to worry about robots stealing our jobs smh

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18 minutes ago, Gabe said:

Yeah me too, everyone does. But if everyone buys from bots then where does that leave the human traders? Even in online hat simulators we have to worry about robots stealing our jobs smh

People that run the bots make the profit. There's no point in trading for profit with low tier items if you don't own a bot. A few cents of profit in each trade simply isn't worth it.

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I guess I've got the harshest message in that I reckon that the bots are detrimental to you and that is why you are not happy. Think about who bots do well for:

 

- Ordinary players who want to quickly buy items

- Ordinary players who want to quickly sell off items and can now obtain near full pure

- Traders like myself who don't operate in the low tier market and enable me to sell off random sweets I get, and also enjoy the benefits above

 

The bots only injure anything or anyone who's function they can do more efficiently (because they're bots). Because they're turning over cheap items, and you are also attempting to do that, then you are the victim of the situation. But that doesn't mean the whole economy suffers, it's just you.

 

My advice would be to leave the low tier market, if you aren't finding it enjoyable

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11 hours ago, ¢/Hugh J. Nuss said:

I guess I've got the harshest message in that I reckon that the bots are detrimental to you and that is why you are not happy. Think about who bots do well for:

 

- Ordinary players who want to quickly buy items

- Ordinary players who want to quickly sell off items and can now obtain near full pure

- Traders like myself who don't operate in the low tier market and enable me to sell off random sweets I get, and also enjoy the benefits above

 

The bots only injure anything or anyone who's function they can do more efficiently (because they're bots). Because they're turning over cheap items, and you are also attempting to do that, then you are the victim of the situation. But that doesn't mean the whole economy suffers, it's just you.

 

My advice would be to leave the low tier market, if you aren't finding it enjoyable

Bots also effect unusual trading, whether it be >15 keys or <100 keys. It's a pain being a seller of an unusual and one day wake up and find that 2 differerent bots are quickselling your same hat, which means I wasted my time and money.

Edited by Cookie Mash Trade.tf
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