Problems (own counter, admins etc)

[Jonyface]

Its been a trend now a days that whenever someone has the item they are upvoting they get flammed for doing so. This is partially the website's fault and the stupidity in the tf2 economy. It seems that the reason why someone down votes is that they dont want other people to make profit. Isnt that what trading is? Buy low sell high to gain slow profit?

 

Admins, the admins have way too much power when it comes to deciding weather a price suggestion gets accepted or not. We all switched from spreadsheet because we believe that this website could be a better way of setting prices with the communities say. Yes i believe proof is needed when making a price suggestion but when 1000 people upvote to 300 people that downvote shouldnt it pass? The suggestion wasnt like from 4.11 to 2.55 it was 1 scrap down. The only reason why keys will never go down is because the sight only accepts raises causing sellers and buyers to raise in order to gain success. Proof: http://backpack.tf/vote/id/51453abdba2536456c000002#51460a274bd7b85e14000028_row (he had decent proof with a lot of support from the community yet it was closed)

 

The ability to vote. Everyone has the right to vote on this website as long as your backpack is worth the item you're voting for + multipliers. It seems people can vote on items they cant even afford. I dont have a great suggestion for this but i dont believe someone should be able to vote on an item they cant even afford. This ties with the how many of the item a person owns when raising the price (Example: I suggested a raise on my unusual because i had better offers than the price but this person came on and downvoted because i owned it. His backpack wasnt even worth a bud where my unusual was worth 1.33)

 

These are my complaints about this website and hope admins and moderators will take the time to read and acknowledge what i believe are flaws in the way this website is run

[Woifi The Viking]

1st point) That's a trend because there are suggestion again and again from people that just want to set a higher price for their items without proof. But some stupid people don't read anything what the suggester or the voters are saying.

 

2nd) You have picked up the worst suggestion ever for this complained. Voting on key prices is rather useless because most people vote what they want prices to be, not what the market is. Also the proof was poor/not enough.

 

3rd) You have to gain your multiplier from rep on the site. It's quite fair I think.

[Sheep]

The only reason why keys will never go down is because the sight only accepts raises causing sellers and buyers to raise in order to gain success.

 

Keys won't go down until the metal problem is fixed and more people start buying keys from the store.

 

That guy making the suggestion didn't have enough proof for a big change like that.

 

he had decent proof with a lot of support from the community

 

Only because everyone wants keys to go down.

[MC22]

Decent proof my ass.

He just had a complete understanding of how to blindly manipulate anyone with under 10 rep.

[The Killjoy]

If by decent proof you mean ignoring plenty of buyers and sells and tf2finance then yes I agree

[Jonyface]

The change was a 1 scrap difference, big change? If you agree that admins should be able to accept or decline anything regardless of votes than why dont we all just go back and use spreadsheet its the exact same
  
 

[cleverpun]

I would love nothing more than to trust every decision to the voters.

 

If admins blindly followed the votes, however, every single price on the site would be subject to emotional involvement and price manipulation.

[Shy Ronnie FYPM Vintage]

While reading r/tf2trade today I came across one of the most well thought out explanations on key prices that I have seen to date.

 

Here is the link to the post:  http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2trade/comments/1aj7mi/q_what_happened_to_the_value_of_keys/

 

 

[–]-Joshhttp://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198025101182 56 points

8 hours

 ago

*

A couple of explanations talk about backpack.tf (which had little/nothing to do with it) and idlers, but there's a couple of other factors that came into play.

Mass unboxing during halloween

During halloween a lot of unboxing happened. Let me stress a lot. Like, seriously ridiculous amounts. It was crazy out there. With high hopes of turning a big profit on limited halloween effects and maybe getting a 1 of 1 it was fun to watch as purple text flowed.

This dropped the value of buds, the BMOC (which crashed from almost a bud down to 13 keys) as people cashed them out to unbox down to about 23 keys and keys quickly accrued a lot of value as they got removed from the economy.

This is only part of the story.

The Russian scam group

For quite a while key prices were stable because keys were being injected into the economy at a steady rate. This was done by a russian group who would buy keys using stolen credit card numbers. They would then use the keys to buy buds and sell the buds for paypal. This helped keep the amount of keys flowing around the economy stable.

Basically, they were using Valve to launder stolen money. Clever, if you don't get caught as it's basically free money. But got caught they did.

Just before halloween, this group got shut down. So not only did a lot of keys get pulled out of the economy, but no more keys flowed in afterwards.

Idlers

At some point someone did the math on idlers. With the amount of idlers and active traders about, it was reckoned about 100,000 refined gets pumped into the economy every week. With no real use for metal except as currency, it just gets traded about. Keys, on the other hand, aren't being bought from the steam store much at all. That's where we get to the straw that broke the economy's back.

Steam Market

If you want proof that people weren't legitimately buying much in the way of keys from the steam store any more, you need look no further than the steam market. With the introduction of a zero-risk way of selling the keys in your backpack, the steam market has meant that it makes no sense to buy from the steam store. It's cheaper to buy from other people!! So, no more keys coming into the economy. It's the final nail in the coffin.

A mix of these four factors are the real reason for what's happened to the key/refined ratio.

A lot of people like to say that it's the value of the refined that's dropped, not the value of the key. And there's a wisdom to that, but it isn't true. If it was true, the price of craft hats would have fluctuated as well. A craft hat would be worth 1.66 or 2 refined if the value of metal had truly deteriorated.

The upshot is that keys are now 4 refined, maybe a little more. Say what you want about backpack.tf, but when it comes to keys - they do only report the prices. When people stop wanting keys enough to not pay that extra scrap, that's when keys will finally stablise. Otherwise, up it goes.

edit: for the people who are accusing backpack.tf price manipulation, answer me this. Why? They don't get anything out of it really. Unless they are planning on crashing the prices of keys and actually have a way of making it happen, it doesn't make sense for them to drive up key prices. It doesn't benefit them.

And for those pointing out that the time of key price rises and backpack.tf becoming popular are similar, I'd like to remind you that correlation does not imply causality. A lot of things happened over that summer and backpack.tf is just oe of them.

[norby89]

 

edit: for the people who are accusing backpack.tf price manipulation, answer me this. Why? They don't get anything out of it really. Unless they are planning on crashing the prices of keys and actually have a way of making it happen, it doesn't make sense for them to drive up key prices. It doesn't benefit them.

And for those pointing out that the time of key price rises and backpack.tf becoming popular are similar, I'd like to remind you that correlation does not imply causality. A lot of things happened over that summer and backpack.tf is just oe of them.

 

Well to be fair you could add backpack.tf to that list. Not as a reason for the rise in key price but as a speeding factor. I think the majority of TF2 trader's use backpack.tf as their #1 pricing guide so the site has acted as a catalyst, adding gallons of kerosene to the already burning fire (iirc at one point, there were 4-5 accepted suggestions within 48 hours). When metal hoarders noticed this trend, they probably thought "alright folks, it's time to get rid of the metal". The price would have risen with or without backpack.tf but imo at a much slower pace.

 

Another reason I do not understand is "greedy traders trying to raise their backpack value". While it's true that when a key suggestion is accepted your backpack value on the site changes as well but in no way is your backpack more valuable than it was before the suggestion.