Prevent people from finding new unboxes

[RealJasonGrace]

Like the title says, how about not allowing people to seek people out who have unpriced items or new unboxes with premium? I have no idea how premium works, but I gathered this much from random discussions.
I just got contacted by a despicable OPskins scammer who wanted to scam me out of the unpriced unusual taunt my secret santa gave me. I KNOW I'm not the only one, but there are a LOT of gullible people out there.
Scammers and sharks seek out these people quite easily. I may be wrong, like I said, I have no idea how premium works, but what exactly are the pros of revealing who unboxed what? If they wanted to trade it, would they not seek you out, come to trading sites?

Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/IMV5T I have no problem revealing the *scammer*'s name, but I'm pretty sure it would incite a witchhunt, which I don't want. And if he's using another person's name, that'd be awful. Anyway, I censored his name. I also reported his bot account, the account with which he contacted me was already banned.


TL;DR (This is not too long :/ )
> Searching for new unboxes with premium is more bad than good.

>I can't think of a single good point, if you can, do tell me.

 

EDIT: No, we didn't have any mutual friends.

[Torb]

1 hour ago, RealJasonGrace said:

Like the title says, how about not allowing people to seek people out who have unpriced items or new unboxes with premium? I have no idea how premium works, but I gathered this much from random discussions.
I just got contacted by a despicable OPskins scammer who wanted to scam me out of the unpriced unusual taunt my secret santa gave me. I KNOW I'm not the only one, but there are a LOT of gullible people out there.
Scammers and sharks seek out these people quite easily. I may be wrong, like I said, I have no idea how premium works, but what exactly are the pros of revealing who unboxed what? If they wanted to trade it, would they not seek you out, come to trading sites?

Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/IMV5T I have no problem revealing the *scammer*'s name, but I'm pretty sure it would incite a witchhunt, which I don't want. And if he's using another person's name, that'd be awful. Anyway, I censored his name. I also reported his bot account, the account with which he contacted me was already banned.


TL;DR (This is not too long :/ )
> Searching for new unboxes with premium is more bad than good.

>I can't think of a single good point, if you can, do tell me.

 

EDIT: No, we didn't have any mutual friends.

How would it differentiate between new unboxed and unpriced.

[Torb]

1 hour ago, RealJasonGrace said:

Like the title says, how about not allowing people to seek people out who have unpriced items or new unboxes with premium? I have no idea how premium works, but I gathered this much from random discussions.
I just got contacted by a despicable OPskins scammer who wanted to scam me out of the unpriced unusual taunt my secret santa gave me. I KNOW I'm not the only one, but there are a LOT of gullible people out there.
Scammers and sharks seek out these people quite easily. I may be wrong, like I said, I have no idea how premium works, but what exactly are the pros of revealing who unboxed what? If they wanted to trade it, would they not seek you out, come to trading sites?

Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/IMV5T I have no problem revealing the *scammer*'s name, but I'm pretty sure it would incite a witchhunt, which I don't want. And if he's using another person's name, that'd be awful. Anyway, I censored his name. I also reported his bot account, the account with which he contacted me was already banned.


TL;DR (This is not too long :/ )
> Searching for new unboxes with premium is more bad than good.

>I can't think of a single good point, if you can, do tell me.

 

EDIT: No, we didn't have any mutual friends.

Also impersonation/opskins scammers rarely use premium, they find someone and go through their friends list or find people who look new and are advertising it.

[RealJasonGrace]

3 minutes ago, djsober said:

How would it differentiate between new unboxed and unpriced.

Items have history, do they not?

"Items are sorted by original ID, so newer items will appear first. The timestamp displayed reflects the time the inventory was parsed." - Taken from premium search page.

1 minute ago, djsober said:

Also impersonation/opskins scammers rarely use premium, they find someone and go through their friends list.

 

Do you have any proof/experience of that? A lot of players here seem to think sharks and other morally corrupt traders use the premium search function to seek out the vulnerable. Is it really that far-fetched to assume scammers use it too? I'm led to believe bans are only account based, considering the fact that the dude that contacted me was banned, but his bot account wasn't. Is it not possible for him to have a "legit" account with which he uses premium? Two scammers who contacted me a while back could not have possibly found me through someone else's friend list, owing to the fact that I had no friends at that time. Also the chances of them going through a seemingly random person's friend list, and checking everyone's backpack in that list, to see if they have something valuable, and also noting if they had any experience trading seems implausible, especially when they have a tool on this website that could practically spoonfeed them potential victims.

[fluffyy]

I agree with this but it was brought up before in a previous thread about -trusting sharks; a mod said only the owner could dictate this change:

 

However, that thread was about sharking and it's good the potential scammers are being addressed here too. 

 

[Torb]

39 minutes ago, RealJasonGrace said:

Items have history, do they not?

"Items are sorted by original ID, so newer items will appear first. The timestamp displayed reflects the time the inventory was parsed." - Taken from premium search page.

 

Do you have any proof/experience of that? A lot of players here seem to think sharks and other morally corrupt traders use the premium search function to seek out the vulnerable. Is it really that far-fetched to assume scammers use it too? I'm led to believe bans are only account based, considering the fact that the dude that contacted me was banned, but his bot account wasn't. Is it not possible for him to have a "legit" account with which he uses premium? Two scammers who contacted me a while back could not have possibly found me through someone else's friend list, owing to the fact that I had no friends at that time. Also the chances of them going through a seemingly random person's friend list, and checking everyone's backpack in that list, to see if they have something valuable, and also noting if they had any experience trading seems implausible, especially when they have a tool on this website that could practically spoonfeed them potential victims.

Most of the scammers don't even play tf2, why would they pay for premium on an account which is pretty much a throwaway

[fluffyy]

3 minutes ago, djsober said:

Most of the scammers don't even play tf2, why would they pay for premium on an account which is pretty much a throwaway

It's possible (and likely the case) that they have premium on one account that stays clean and to find people to target on alts. 

[RealJasonGrace]

10 hours ago, djsober said:

Most of the scammers don't even play tf2, why would they pay for premium on an account which is pretty much a throwaway

Again, do you have any experience/proof of that? Are you sure that most scammers just scam items without playing the game, and not just transfer it to their "main" account and play the game? Even if they don't play tf2, with the profit they make, they can easily afford to pay for premium. FireballNitro put it in a nutshell.

[Torb]

Just now, RealJasonGrace said:

Again, do you have any experience/proof of that? Are you sure that most scammers just scam items without playing the game, and not just transfer it to their "main" account and play the game? Even if they don't play tf2, with the profit they make, they can easily afford to pay for premium. FireballNitro put it in a nutshell.

Well usually, they go to a scammer fence and sell it for keys

[RealJasonGrace]

3 minutes ago, djsober said:

Well usually, they go to a scammer fence and sell it for keys

Topic is going off-track, it doesn't matter where the item goes. You've made one half-valid point relevant to the suggestion, which was addressed by both me and Fireball.
Do you think people should be allowed to track down new unboxes and unpriced items? If so, why? If not, why not?

[Torb]

1 minute ago, RealJasonGrace said:

Topic is going off-track, it doesn't matter where the item goes. You've made one half-valid point relevant to the suggestion, which was addressed by both me and Fireball.
Do you think people should be allowed to track down new unboxes and unpriced items? If so, why? If not, why not?

Well quite rude of you, but yes I think they should. They shouldn't inhibit a service just because some wrong is done with it. For example money wasn't made to buy drugs but it still does.

[RealJasonGrace]

22 minutes ago, djsober said:

Well quite rude of you, but yes I think they should. They shouldn't inhibit a service just because some wrong is done with it. For example money wasn't made to buy drugs but it still does.

 

Well I'm sorry you found my comment distasteful. But I want more than "if it aint broke don't fix it". How exactly does it help genuine traders? WHY exactly should there be a list of new unboxes? Do the new players who unbox know about this? How is this "service" even ethical?

I'll give you an analogy, it won't be perfect, but it will be fairly accurate. The government (Valve) provides lottery tickets (keys). The website (backpack.tf) provides a list of names and addresses of everyone who wins the lottery, to people who pay a small amount to them. Before, the people who won had a signboard outside their house, so unless you were in the same vicinity, you wouldn't know. Now, you can quite easily find out the addresses and names of everyone. (Not counting private inventories here).

Is THIS fair?

[Torb]

6 minutes ago, RealJasonGrace said:

 

Well I'm sorry you found my comment distasteful. But I want more than "if it aint broke don't fix it". How exactly does it help genuine traders? WHY exactly should there be a list of new unboxes? Do the new players who unbox know about this? How is this "service" even ethical?

I'll give you an analogy, it won't be perfect, but it will be fairly accurate. The government (Valve) provides lottery tickets (keys). The website (backpack.tf) provides a list of names and addresses of everyone who wins the lottery, to people who pay a small amount to them. Before, the people who won had a signboard outside their house, so unless you were in the same vicinity, you wouldn't know. Now, you can quite easily find out the addresses and names of everyone. (Not counting private inventories here).

Is THIS fair?

That's a bit different and also what would you stand to gain from finding out a lottery winners info. You cant say "how much for your 14 million dollars" or "would you accept 500000 for your 14 million". Also premium has many uses such as tracking down rare hats or hats not on the market, helping with price Suggestions, autobumping trades ect.

[RealJasonGrace]

2 minutes ago, djsober said:

That's a bit different and also what would you stand to gain from finding out a lottery winners info. You cant say "how much for your 14 million dollars" or "would you accept 500000 for your 14 million"

Y'know, the ol' nigerian prince (OP skins). Don't take the analogy literally. And it's really not different. You can find out new unboxes, see if they have any experience trading, and then go scam/shark him. You still haven't told me how it helps actual traders.

[Torb]

Just now, RealJasonGrace said:

Y'know, the ol' nigerian prince (OP skins). Don't take the analogy literally. And it's really not different. You can find out new unboxes, see if they have any experience trading, and then go scam/shark him. You still haven't told me how it helps actual traders.

Don't know if you see but I edited it. I'll put it again.

Premium helps people track down rare hats (ie dream unusuals), helps with price Suggestions and autobumping trades.

[RealJasonGrace]

Just now, djsober said:

Don't know if you see but I edited it. I'll put it again.

Premium helps people track down rare hats (ie dream unusuals), helps with price Suggestions and autobumping trades.

 

So, instead of waiting for someone to decide to trade, it lets you go harrass the player into selling the dream unusual. How does it help with price suggestions and autobumping trades? Remember, I'm not talking about removing premium entirely, just removing the feature where you can see new unboxes and unpriced items. If they're unpriced, it's really not fair on even relatively good traders. You can offer like 50 keys for an unpriced unusual, when it might be worth 300 keys.

[Torb]

1 minute ago, RealJasonGrace said:

 

So, instead of waiting for someone to decide to trade, it lets you go harrass the player into selling the dream unusual. How does it help with price suggestions and autobumping trades? Remember, I'm not talking about removing premium entirely, just removing the feature where you can see new unboxes and unpriced items. If they're unpriced, it's really not fair on even relatively good traders. You can offer like 50 keys for an unpriced unusual, when it might be worth 300 keys.

First, by dream unusual, I meant like a 1/2 unusual with none on market. Second, it helps with price Suggestions because you can see all of the different versions of that item so you can find more sales and make more accurate suggestions. Third, it autobumps trades which makes more people see them and will make it more likely to get an offer. Also, if you removed people from being able to see unpriced unusuals, it would inhibit price suggestions because people could see less sales.

[RealJasonGrace]

3 hours ago, djsober said:

First, by dream unusual, I meant like a 1/2 unusual with none on market. Second, it helps with price Suggestions because you can see all of the different versions of that item so you can find more sales and make more accurate suggestions. Third, it autobumps trades which makes more people see them and will make it more likely to get an offer. Also, if you removed people from being able to see unpriced unusuals, it would inhibit price suggestions because people could see less sales.

 

Dream unusual > If there is like 1 / 2 unusual with none on the market, then you really shouldn't be harassing the owner. If there is none on the market, doesn't it make it kinda obvious that they are not interested in selling?
Price suggestions > How does finding out new unboxes help with finding more sales and making more accurate suggestions?
Autobump trades > So... if you want a specific unusual, you search for it and find listings? Doesn't regular search already do that?
Unpriced unusuals > Seeing less sales to suggest prices is a lesser evil than having people getting sharked by traders, then them making a massive profit off of it. If anything, allowing people to see unpriced unusuals would result in wildly varying prices, the sharkers buying it dirt cheap and decent traders paying fairly.

Also the stats page for an item lists how many items of that kind exist, you don't need premium search for that. Your argument seems to be based off of accurate price suggestions, which could be done without a list of recent unboxes.

 

[Torb]

21 minutes ago, RealJasonGrace said:

 

Dream unusual > If there is like 1 / 2 unusual with none on the market, then you really shouldn't be harassing the owner. If there is none on the market, doesn't it make it kinda obvious that they are not interested in selling?
Price suggestions > How does finding out new unboxes help with finding more sales and making more accurate suggestions?
Autobump trades > So... if you want a specific unusual, you search for it and find listings? Doesn't regular search already do that?
Unpriced unusuals > Seeing less sales to suggest prices is a lesser evil than having people getting sharked by traders, then them making a massive profit off of it. If anything, allowing people to see unpriced unusuals would result in wildly varying prices, the sharkers buying it dirt cheap and decent traders paying fairly.

Also the stats page for an item lists how many items of that kind exist, you don't need premium search for that. Your argument seems to be based off of accurate price suggestions, which could be done without a list of recent unboxes.

 

Less sales just means that the price is less accurate.