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[Q] Is it not very very simple to abuse the b/o cap rule?


LaughingLollipop

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So lets say I'm selling something on outpost

 

I list a price, I sell the item

 

Before I hit confirm on my mobile, I change the text in the listing to say b/o 1 key (frankly you can change the text anytime, even weeks/months after a sale)

 

Now you say volume of sales blah blah. You're missing the point, many unusual hats are priced based upon a single sale (of which some are b/o capped).

 

In line with all the various rules and rulings I can find, this 1 key example b/o would cap the sale and thus the price at 1 key (barring other sales)

 

 

Now I'm sure I'll get some conceited and self serving response about 'not reasonable' or 'moderator discretion' but lets take a minute and think... if I were to simply knock 20% off the b/o prior to accepting the b/o could I not devalue something at will?

 

A hat that is 1/1 or rarely sold may only have a single sale within the suggestion window. Very few have a multitude of priceable sales that is suitable to determine outliers (IE it could still be used as a b/o cap low end)

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When gathering proof one could just compare the backpack to see that the b/o is false, or just ask the guy who bought how much he payed for and see if it adds up.

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When gathering proof one could just compare the backpack to see that the b/o is false, or just ask the guy who bought how much he payed for and see if it adds up.

 

?

 

the whole point of the b/o cap rule is that if the buyer pays more than the pure b/o the sale can only be considered as the pure b/o

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If they pay 100, and the Buyout is changed to 25, then that's obviously off. If they pay 100 Pure with a Buyout of 75, then that'd be another sign

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If they pay 100, and the Buyout is changed to 25, then that's obviously off. If they pay 100 Pure with a Buyout of 75, then that'd be another sign

 

we all know the vast majority of sales are not for pure. In those cases this can easily and simply be abused as I've described.

 

At the moment the rule doesn't actually touch that case, and unless its in that nebulous and nasty bucket of 'moderator discretion' it'd be capped at 75.

 

 

 

this seems to be a reincarnation of the axed overpay rule, but its merely punishing people who buy from traders who don't clear notes after sale

 

if its 90 pure or 100 in hats and they pay a hat worth 100 why should it be priced 90?

 

there is a fundamental flaw where you stop including overpay unless the seller has a pure b/o and doesn't clean it. Most any hat that takes a hat worth 100 would take 90 pure in a second, but they don't all say it.

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Most sellers want overpay if the payment is in items, so to price an item with its overpay value would be over pricing it, hence why the pure Buyout is used.

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Most sellers want overpay if the payment is in items, so to price an item with its overpay value would be over pricing it, hence why the pure Buyout is used.

 

you're not grasping the reality tho... that is not what this site has as a core pricing rule. There is by definition, NO OVERPAY APPLIED TO HAT FOR HAT SALES

 

right now if you have no b/o or clear your b/o and sell an item for a hat worth 100 it is priced at 100

 

if you have a b/o 90 pure and take a 100 key hat is priced 90

 

same item for same hat, 2 different prices. 90/100 isn't even an extreme example

 

I'm simply suggesting that since 90 as a b/o cap is indeed arbitrary and nearly always based on op b/o if I sell anything for not entirely pure I can go edit in or edit my b/o to be like 70% the value of the hat I got and hence fuck the value 30%

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This actually really did bother me when I used to make suggestions for unusuals. The only saving thing is that a lot of people put their buyouts in the crafting numbers for keys, which can't be changed.

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If they pay 100, and the Buyout is changed to 25, then that's obviously off. If they pay 100 Pure with a Buyout of 75, then that'd be another sign

But what if u pay 411 for a 300 buyout :^)

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I don't know that this ever would benefit a seller.

 

So let's say that one day Joe buys a 100-key hat from Bob with a hat worth 100, when Bob's B/O was 100. Then Bob retroactively lowers his B/O to 85 because Bob wants to watch the world burn. Then some bp.tf scrub makes a suggestion at 85. If Joe cares about his hat value on bp.tf, even if he had no evidence to back up his story, he could still at least try to explain what happened--although everyone might call Joe a salty loser and think he's lying, Bob could only get away with this one or two times before everyone realized what he was doing.

 

In the scenario above, Bob's new hat is worth 100 because it was priced at 100 and was acquired for another hat worth 100. However, if he retroactively lowers his B/O, he also risks lowering the price of his new hat along with the price of the one he sold. If he says the old hat had a B/O of 85 (making it worth 85 for suggesting porpoises) and the old hat gets priced at 85...well, he 1:1'ed it with the new hat, so that's a sale of his new hat at 85. (as I understand it, anyway. I'm not really into suggesting. Someone call me names and correct me if I'm wrong)

 

I definitely agree that a problem becomes apparent when you look at sales involving unusual overpay (which honestly is most unusual sales), but I'm not sure it's anything a seller would want to abuse.

 

Let's say Bob has a B/O of 100 pure on his hat priced at 100 and sells it for a 110-key hat (pretty standard overpay). His new hat (previously worth 110) can't be priced over 110 with this sale, no matter what he retroactively changes his B/O to.

 

At worst, I'd say this problem means that sellers want to either list unrealistic B/Os, put asking prices in unsuals, or else clear B/Os after every sale to avoid losses. I don't see a way sellers can really benefit from abusing this, though.

 

 

tl;dr: Sure, you could devalue an item at will, if no one decided to disagree. But you'd also devalue whatever you got in exchange, so you'd probably never want to do that.

 

Related question: does anyone have a link to somewhere that has an adult explaining the reasoning behind removing the overpay rule? Because at first glance that seems like a very silly thing to have done.

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-snip-

Well a sale can only be used to price one of the hats, so if the trade is used to price the hat he traded for it doesn't really matter what his b/o was, because only the b/o of the hat to be priced is really considered.

 

The way people could benefit from this is by essentially short-selling, I.e. you sell your hat for more and buy it back for less. If you don't really mind holding onto a hat, why not keep the hat and some extra keys.

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The b/o is there in place to be more realistic if a seller was perfectly willing to accept 100keys for his hat but you paid 150 keys in items then that means you overpaid by 50 keys. It doesnt matter if you paid more if the seller was willing to accept less.

 

It wouldnt make any sense to price the hat at 150keys if anyone with 100 could have just as easily bought the hat for a lower price. If you ignore the b/o you end up inflating the price of the hat giving it a unrealistic price.

 

 

 

But what if u pay 411 for a 300 buyout :^)

 

Then you're an idiot for overpaying that much :P

 

Might as well QS most of the items for keys and just pay the buyout and have some keys left over.

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A way to solve that would be to check the offers of the unusual, unless there aren't any offers within 3 months. Even if the unusual is so rare that there is only one sale that can be used to determine the worth, there might be offers that can be used to determine if the buyout is really low.

 

Take for an example, if you've sold a hat where your buyout was 200 keys, but you've dropped the buyout down to 160 keys (20% off real buyout), people will know if something is off if they check the offers if the offers (no overpay) are constantly at the 160-200 Keys range. However, the offer must be legitimate, i.e. proof on offer and not a fake one.

 

You could also check even older offers (3-4 months old) to see if the price do really make sense, although you will need to keep in mind that prices do change a lot for 3rd generation+ unusuals or all-class changes. 

 

At the end of the day, it is really up to the buyer whether or not to use backpack.tf when buying an unusual. Traders that trade for high to god tier unusuals which are normally rare don't even use backpack.tf to value their unusuals straightly, so I don't think it's much of a problem. Although backpack.tf do aim at the real value of every unusuals, I don't really think it's possible to do it with only one sale and no offers. 

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this thread has made me wanna take screenshots now before I do a trade cause y'no sometimes there are ppl who wanna 1:1 if you have something they want. PARANOIA KICKS IN

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If someone paid 100 pure for your item and your fake b/o was 50, clearly something would be off. It is extremely rare that someone pays over the b/o in pure... Also, even if you paid 100 in items and b/o was 50, something would seem off. Yes, I believe it's "technically" possible to fake the system, but the question is, why?

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If someone paid 100 pure for your item and your fake b/o was 50, clearly something would be off. It is extremely rare that someone pays over the b/o in pure... Also, even if you paid 100 in items and b/o was 50, something would seem off. Yes, I believe it's "technically" possible to fake the system, but the question is, why?

 

Pure sales can't be capped at the B/O no matter what. The whole purpose of B/O caps is to find the pure value of items, which is not needed in this case. If X hat sells for more than the B/O, then it's obvious that it (the B/O) was too low and doesn't represent what we are all looking for while doing suggestions.

 

As for being able to manipulate the B/Os, well, what can't be manipulated nowadays? The thing is that the seller doesn't benefit from doing it, and even if he/she did change it, he/she could get caught (it isn't very hard to find out) and banned. What we can't expect is to completely remove these caps, because they make sense in most cases. Imagine Golden Pans getting priced at 1800-2000 keys when they don't sell for above 1200 in pure.

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Very inclined to agree with this, as it's a faulty system at times.

What most on this thread don't seem to realize is that incorrect or temporarily changed b/os are often used for suggestions and minis down the road.

 

Lets say someone drops their b/o from 100 to 75 for a day or two, then just outright closes the trade on Outpost.

They open up a new trade a couple weeks later, one without a listed buyout, and they sell it for 100 pure.

Any price suggester could, down the road, use the prior trade's quicksale buyout at "75" to price the hat.

 

I actually had a buddy who was selling a hat off and on for like 3 or 4 months, the trade went inactive constantly.

Towards the end he reduced the price to a quicksale price before just closing the trade, and the trade listing was closed at said quicksale price.

I saw a mini using his listing a little while later, saying "listed at this price for 4 months," and it was used to drop his hat in value. 

 

I'm probably a bit off on the details of the story, but even just taking this as an example it shows where pricing off of buyouts could be incorrect. TF2Outpost doesn't have a "Trade description history," so we have no way of being able to tell how long ago or how frequently a b/o was changed.

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Pure sales can't be capped at the B/O no matter what. The whole purpose of B/O caps is to find the pure value of items, which is not needed in this case. If X hat sells for more than the B/O, then it's obvious that it (the B/O) was too low and doesn't represent what we are all looking for while doing suggestions.

 

As for being able to manipulate the B/Os, well, what can't be manipulated nowadays? The thing is that the seller doesn't benefit from doing it, and even if he/she did change it, he/she could get caught (it isn't very hard to find out) and banned. What we can't expect is to completely remove these caps, because they make sense in most cases. Imagine Golden Pans getting priced at 1800-2000 keys when they don't sell for above 1200 in pure.

 

banned for what? from where? you realize the shitty and inaccurate suggestions rarely come from the people making/administering the trades

 

I change literally every single b/o I've ever set on outpost the instant I sell a hat. 

 

Its totally within my right to do so and I will continue to do so.

 

Just pondering what the protection against cutting the sale price by 25% would be (as opposed to deletion or multiplying by 100).

 

Judging from the answers in this thread, there is no protection unless payment was rendered in full pure.

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banned for what? from where? you realize the shitty and inaccurate suggestions rarely come from the people making/administering the trades

 

I change literally every single b/o I've ever set on outpost the instant I sell a hat. 

 

Its totally within my right to do so and I will continue to do so.

It's still manipulating an item's price, and somewhat reflects what Raven was banned for.

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banned for what? from where? you realize the shitty and inaccurate suggestions rarely come from the people making/administering the trades

 

I change literally every single b/o I've ever set on outpost the instant I sell a hat. 

 

Its totally within my right to do so and I will continue to do so.

 

Just pondering what the protection against cutting the sale price by 25% would be (as opposed to deletion or multiplying by 100).

 

Judging from the answers in this thread, there is no protection unless payment was rendered in full pure.

 

You do realize that doing it on purpose is price manipulation, right? It's like asking a seller to remove the B/O to avoid the cap.

 

All it takes to catch whoever does it is a screenshot before and after a sale. And believe me, sooner than later the buyer on any of these sales will come to backpack.tf and provide proof. You could get banned, or mods could decide to not include any of your sales in future suggestions.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Administrators

As with any rule, there are ways around them, yeah. 

Anyway, in this context, please be aware that there is a distinct difference between removing your buyout and lowering your buyout after you've sold your hat:

- Removing your BO is up to you. If no one knew what the buyout was or if no one points out the buyout, then there is nothing we can do about it (similar to people who are outpost banned and sell their items on the classifieds). It is meant to give an insight in what a hat can and cant sell for in pure, and if you as a trader do not wish to convey your buyout after a trade, then so be it. People can check suggestions and see what items actually sold for; knowing how long an item has been up for sale with a certain BO is an extra insight that can be helpful for traders (and is therefore favorable for suggestions).

- Lowering your BO after your trade in spite of your buyer would be an atrocious act and would consitute as manipulation in my eyes. I do not see this serving any purpose, though; I do not see why a seller would want their buyer to have their hats priced lower, as it brings no personal benefits. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that

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