Major proposed changes to unusual pricing to target price inflation

[K1ng]

1) Nothing against that.

 

2) Somewhat agree with Gent and Woifi here.  My thoughts on taunts:

 - Remove every price from before Halloween 2016 update, and let the others slowly go down until they stabilize.

 - Temporarily change the outdated threshold to ~1 month (or even less).

 - Flexibilize rules for the use of B/Os to drop prices.

 

Reasoning: I don't think that just wiping every price right now is going to work. It will be way easier to reach an accurate pricing of taunts by slowly dropping them using B/Os (or sales that don't involve other taunts) than just wiping every price and waiting for someone to price them with sales (which will take ages).

 

3) I see two options here:

 - a) Completely remove dupe tags here on backpack.tf, and start using both duped/clean hats in suggestions.

 - b ) Raise the "dupes don't matter" threshold from 30 keys to somewhere around 50 keys, maybe even a bit higher.

 

Reasoning: There isn't a big difference in unusuals worth less than 50, but there is a huge one for hats worth more than 100 keys. Just an example, I sold a clean Burning Trophy Belt for 128 keys pure in like a week, when a duped one had a hard time selling for 70. Honestly, I don't see how a range of 70-128 would accurately represent the value of the (clean) hat.

If we are going to allow the use of dupes in suggestions on a case-by-case basis, we better leave it as it is right now. Unusual suggestions are complex enough right now, and that wouldn't be easy to handle for new people. That's the reasoning used when overpay and "who offered what" rules were removed a while ago.

 

4) And about unusual pricing events, that's a cool idea.

[Vittoo]

Yes please, make dupe warnings less extreme. A duped hat is in no way different from a clean one so i dont see why it should even be said.

[Geel]

Caring about dupes makes as much sense as religion. It's nonsensical.

[Fishtail]

Caring about dupes makes as much sense as religion. It's nonsensical.

Right on!

[iTrade ™]

(1) That seems like a good idea to wipe those prices.

 

(2) Also agree with this. Unusual taunts should furthermore not be allowed to be prices through sales of other unusual taunts. This will only lead to unusual taunt price inflation.

 

(3) Big no! Too many people in the trading community, me included, value dupes at a lower price than non-dupes. This is mostly because they tend to sell not as well as their clean counterparts. I strongly oppose this change

 

 

The unusual taunt pricing event sounds like a good idea.

[Alberny]

Caring about dupes makes as much sense as religion. It's nonsensical.

Also there is no way you can check

[Jessica]

If you want dupes NOT to matter maybe remove the "duped" tag off the item history. Thats the only reason people care.

 

Anyhow it DOES lower the price on hats worth hundreds of keys. What if a 1000 key clean hat has no sellers in 3 months but a duped comes on the market and sells much cheaper than the BP price? a lot of people offer less for dupes over a certain margin as someone said above you should just raise the amount I truely believe anything under 100 keys is just fine but I think allowing any unusual is just a bit much.

 

 

As much as people want to deny that dupes mean nothing they really do on hats worth hundreds of keys.

[SpotlightR]

Hello.

 

Proposal 1, I'd say that is a good idea. These decimal prices fluctuate whenever key prices change. This needs to be addressed properly.

 

Proposal 2, absolutely. Taunts are completely unstable and their prices are almost always inaccurate. These inaccurate prices can be used to hurt newer traders that rely on face value prices without doing other research.

 

Proposal 3, please do not. Milkmans, Team Captains, Killer Exclusives, Reggaelators, Milkmans, Hustler's Hallmarks, Milkmans, and countless other hats will be hit hard if this change were to go into effect. Dupes are valued less than clean items and that makes sense. Nobody wants to own an item with an identical copy of it out there in somebody else's inventory. This change would hurt my Milkman collection substantially. It would suck.

 

i'll agree with K1ng on Proposal 3. Raising the "dupes don't matter" threshold by 10-30 keys or so would be fine. However, for rarer hats, this would be extreme. The Burning TC would drop like 1500-2000 keys, the Scorching by ~300, the Beams by ~200, and other TCs by a lot. The Scorching KE would tank by a good 500 or so, and the Burning Milkman would go down by like 50 on face value, though I know a clean version can sell for a ton.

 

I know I may be biased here, but I know I'm not alone.

 

All in all, fantastic proposals. I don't mean to flame you or be rude, I'd love to see more changes come into effect when regarding prices and this is a magnificent start.

 

Thanks tons Polar!

[Kevin the Chicken God]

The idea behind this is to not mislead people. These old values are almost always incorrect. If they can't be updated, then that's probably for the best; it's not bad for an item to be unpriced, and we would rather an item be unpriced than have a grossly incorrect value.

 

But again, I don't see why we need to do this. The only negative effect I can perceive of these terribly overpriced unusuals is that they're an eyesore on the unusual page, if fluctuation is the issue then we can just round off?

If you want dupes NOT to matter maybe remove the "duped" tag off the item history. Thats the only reason people care.

 

Anyhow it DOES lower the price on hats worth hundreds of keys. What if a 500 key hat doesn't sell in 3 months but 1 duped does for much cheaper than the BP price? a lot of people offer less for dupes over a certain margin as someone said above you should just raise the amount I truely believe anything under 100 keys is just fine but I think allowing any unusual is just a bit much.

 

 

As much as people want to deny that dupes mean nothing they really do on hats worth hundreds of keys.

Yeah, like I said in my post, the dupes rule would have to have other rules accompanying it which dont let users price an item using solely duped sales or that don't allow for low ends from duped sales.

 

If I'm going to be honest, the idea of completely wiping item prices (more so in #1 than in #2), feels a lot like bptf overstepping its bounds, going from a market reflector to a market regulator in saying "These prices are wrong, we're just going to get rid of them". The fact that the site can and would be this willing to completely wipe prices on a whim I think would be too much regulation for a virtually non-existent problem.

[Xergoyf]

1) Yes. Decimal prices are inflated, fluctuate randomly, and overall make hats cancerous and hard to sell. No objections

 

2) No. I think removing all taunt's pricing is a bit extreme. Yes, they are all super inflated and hard to sell, but I think if more people made suggestions on these taunts, we could lessen the inflation issue. I think reducing the indate period of taunts to like a month would also help, as well as pricing events that encourage people to update taunts. Wiping all taunts would enrage the community as a whole, and might make them even harder to sell due to people not wanting to sell for way less than they paid for or the always present issue of the risk trading for unpriced unusuals. 

 

3) YES. There are so many duped unusuals that simply cant sell because there priced of a clean one which is ridiculously inflated. Dupes shouldn't matter anyways, its only people saying dupes matter that makes dupes matter. I think lessening the severity of the duped item message would definitely help. People say that dupes should be worth less because there is more in existence, but ALL of the ones in existence should be worth less because of this, not just the dupes. Price suggestions should reflect this, not on only the clean ones (which limiting to clean ones halfs the suggestible supply further inflating the prices) Its the insanely overpriced clean ones that are the issues, not the dupes. Dupes are a thing of the past, and if backpack.tf can make people stop caring, im all for it :^)

 

Im surprised nobody has mentioned the All-Class crate yet. Arguably the all-class crate is just as big of an issue as the taunts, as people are unboxing insanely inflated hats that were priced ages ago at super high prices based on rarity. Im looking at your Haunted Ghosts Law/Logo KE :|

[A Delicious Cashew]

I'm a no for all 3. 

 

(1): The prices already show up as outdated, and we already can't use that for suggesting or anything. This would create a huge mess, and I think we'd be better off maybe making our standards for dropping items via b/o's a little more relaxed than doing that. If something hasn't sold enough to be repriced, then the outdated price is most likely affecting no one. I remember having a "challenge of the week" in 2015/2016 that priced the ones that did have sales successfully. I think if suggestors focused on tracking down those hats and pricing those, we can make a dent in the decimals again. Removing prices is not the way to solve these issues

 

One of the major issue is with halloween effects. 19/164 secret are in decimals, 17/159 stormy 13th, 15/149 harvest, 27/164 knifestorm, 23/180 eerie, 25/183 cauldron etc. I'd put the over/under on how many of those hats are actually priceable at 10, maybe 15. These are the prices that'd you'd be removing. I don't believe this would be the goal anyways. The subset of the extremely outdated hats that aren't halloween effects are the hats that will potentially have sales. I bet 3-5% of the 10% of prices that are in decimals could actually be priced if suggestors tried. It's definitely much easier now with a simple way to check all the item histories in premium for sales and get the comparision links. If they focused on this for a few weeks, I do strongly believe the decimals would become less of an issue

 

(2): I'd prefer not to do this as well. We'd definitely end up leading the market, when our goal is to represent the sales. Yes, I agree that our goal is not really happening at the moment. It's simple supply and demand - I think we should just wait for the prices to reach the equilibrium price level themselves. Perhaps don't allow sales older than a month or so if we want to speed it up, but removing it will also create chaos and absolutely destroy the unusual taunt market. Even if we were to remove them now, why would the "new" prices be any better? The prices would still likely fluctuate and will take time to recover. Effectively, the listed prices probably still won't be accurate. The one thing I would be open to would be not allowing these taunts to be used determine a price range on another unusual hat for a period of time. Or perhaps they could be allowed if there was a very recent suggestion made on the taunt that accurately captured the value at the time.

 

(3): I agree with what people have said here and on Discord - just not really plausible on a bunch of hats. We can't apply it on just some hats and not on others, not to mention the market can change from being all dupes to all cleans as someone mentioned. Dupes are definitely dumb, but I don't think anything suggested here is plausible in resolving this issue.

 

My solution:  The pricing event should focus on removing prices in decimals and perhaps updating unusual taunts. No prices should be removed. We can make a major dent in resolving these issues if we actually put our time and effort to it. 

 

I see all of these options creating unintended consequences that will lead to a major mess and potentially ruin the reputation of the site. I do not believe those are the best way to handle these issues.

[Diamond jozu]

i agree very much about the duped unusuals.like what does it do to the effect.it doesnt change the look or anything.just like how the gifted tag was.50% if it was gifted but now its no longer since the tag is removable

[Fragstealer]

I think dupes do matter, when the trading with scammer rules was tweaked it logically meant a lot of dupes came in from the cold so to speak, hats that are rare get affected simply by the dupes being passed around fast and furiously and for a lot less than clean with a spiralling effect. The massive range it would create would create higher price discrepancies.

[Moose]

Additionally, some of the older sales included overpay.

[TheVirtualEconomist]

Im surprised nobody has mentioned the All-Class crate yet. Arguably the all-class crate is just as big of an issue as the taunts, as people are unboxing insanely inflated hats that were priced ages ago at super high prices based on rarity. Im looking at your Haunted Ghosts Law/Logo KE :|

 

This^^ 

 

Dunno if people have caught on yet but the all class crate is disastrous for the economy. So many god tiers have been unboxed since the crate was added and the supply is now so much higher than the demand such that alot of unboxes out of the all class crate are just as cancerous as taunts. Higher tier laws, KEs, executioners, cotton heads, ext. are severely overpriced and basically impossible to sell. They are not as obvious of a problem because people have not discriminated against them as much as new taunts, but if you are considering such (imo extreme) ideas such as wiping taunts you should  take a look at how the all class crate is effecting the high to god tier market. It's not pretty.

[Apo]

1) I agree, more or less. If the price being updated from buds messed with the price.. Having no price is the same as a shit tier hat with a 200 key price. Except people won't get sharked by it if it is unpriced. Obviously it would be better to try and "un-inflate" the prices, but I'm not sure if that's possible, or even plausible.

 

2) Disagree. Taunts priced before the Halloween update should (maybe) get wiped.

Something like this: http://backpack.tf/suggestion/589fe7c5e33877126d68b81ewhich sold for > full pure< after the Halloween event, should not get wiped.

There are other taunts out there with similar stories (another example http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58a0d0d90e2cad1d8d4dbeca or http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58cf4ed6c4404533f801e3b4). If they recently sold for full pure or items that are not taunts, they should not be wiped.

 

3) I slightly diagree. Even though the only reason people pay less, is because other people pay less, because... other people pay less. Circular logic.

 

On rarer hats, expensive hats, or lets say, a 1/1 clean hat where 2 exist with like 6 dupes off the one duped copy, or other similar situations... this could hurt the market.

If the item has not had a clean sale, or clean variant on the market for something, like 6 months or a year.. I would find this perfectly acceptable. But it should be obvious in the suggestion if it is priced using only dupes.

 

 

Edited like 10-20 minutes after I posted to clarify some things.

[Woifi The Viking]

After hearing/reading more arguments and some time to think about it I wanna updage my views a little.

 

(1) They should not be wiped, just get an extra outdated sign and their price should not count towards average effect/hat price of the unusual. It should still show the value in peoples inventories.

 

(2) As others have pointed out, there are a couple of taunts who have been given a fair price, including most ghastly ghosts and haunted phantasm taunts. A case could be made that even most new priced halloween effect taunts are somewhat stable now. I probably rather start cherry picking kinda than just wiping all completely.

 

(3) Still a big no. Only for duped vintages maybe. Yes dupes have no visual downside and nothing can happen to them (eg deleted by valve). But I say let the market adjust more, we should follow the lead of the market and not jump to far ahead with putting duped and clean to an equal spot.

[apollothelion]

Okay after reading through everyone, I'd like to give my opinion.

 

I think I most agree with Cashew.

 

• Focusing on repricing the ones still in decimals should be the focus of the event rather than just wiping it all away.
• Making taunts tend to be outdated quicker (ie. not having to wait 3 months) would benefit greatly!
• As for the dupe, I just agree with cashew. Maybe like the strange variant, make a dupe? (idk it didn't seem to make much of a difference) If anything, if dupe sales support in the same range as clean, I think it should be included.
• ALSO. Make the dupe sign less scary. That's something cares mentioned and I think thats important to slowly move away from the stigma of dupes.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

Quick input after catching up.

 

I'm fine with wiping prices on items priced before the bud conversion, but I'd also be fine with them being the focus of a pricing event instead. I can see both sides but I guess I'd lean towards supporting cashew's argument in that if the hats are still traded they can be repriced based on that anyway, and if they're not then the outdated price isn't hurting anyone so who cares.

 

Taunts... well, on this one I'd say see how the event goes and then assess how do-able it would be to update them to reasonable prices as it stands or if a wipe would be necessary. Reserving judgement until we have more information I guess.

 

Dupes. I'd support raising the threshold for including dupe sales by a huge margin over allowing them period. Yeah caring about dupes is stupid but we're not here to dictate we're here to reflect, and people do care about dupes. They sell for less. A range including both is fine on low and mid tier hats but don't agree so much on high tiers where the range would be completely ridiculous in a lot of cases, and the reality would be that all the hats in people's backpacks would display the price of the median regardless of if they're duped or clean.

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

Thing is, even hats with year-ish old prices are inflated and overpriced. I just so happen to have an example, of an salty kid accusing me of "targeting" his bp few days ago, after i made the following suggestions:

 

1. http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58ff727bc44045656c65b04a

2. http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58ff945a0e2cad185c60d1a4

 

Both happened to be in his bp, which i had no idea of (polar knows the best xd). Pretty sure that 1 downvote on both of the suggestions is from him also. xdd

 

My point is, there is a lot of stuff overpriced even WAY after March 2015 and it is highly noticable, that many prices are dropping on unusuals DAILY, but stuff is STILL overpriced. People, who are inexperienced with compare links and such, are paying full price on overpriced hats, since they dont even know how to check sales and thats an issue. Its not always that you can check if something is overpriced or not just by unsolds. Now, when they see a suggestion, which gives a massive or even a small drop on a hat, they realise they have paid full-ish price on an overpriced hat and that they will have hard time selling it. Situations like that will make some people very salty, as i said above. Many cases of outliers is also, because of such people desperately offering their overpriced hat on other stuff and when someone happens to accept, thats an outlier and the user who accepted is now the one having a hard time. Ive literally added a rule on my op trades saying "im not valuing overpriced items by current bp price". That all because i get offered overpriced items quite a lot.

 

Anyways, im really hyped by the event, cant wait! Crimson out. o/

[Woifi The Viking]

Thing is, even hats with year-ish old prices are inflated and overpriced. I just so happen to have an example, of an salty kid accusing me of "targeting" his bp few days ago, after i made the following suggestions:

 

1. http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58ff727bc44045656c65b04a

2. http://backpack.tf/suggestion/58ff945a0e2cad185c60d1a4

 

Both happened to be in his bp, which i had no idea of (polar knows the best xd). Pretty sure that 1 downvote on both of the suggestions is from him also. xdd

 

My point is, there is a lot of stuff overpriced even WAY after March 2015 and it is highly noticable, that many prices are dropping on unusuals DAILY, but stuff is STILL overpriced. People, who are inexperienced with compare links and such, are paying full price on overpriced hats, since they dont even know how to check sales and thats an issue. Its not always that you can check if something is overpriced or not just by unsolds. Now, when they see a suggestion, which gives a massive or even a small drop on a hat, they realise they have paid full-ish price on an overpriced hat and that they will have hard time selling it. Situations like that will make some people very salty, as i said above. Many cases of outliers is also, because of such people desperately offering their overpriced hat on other stuff and when someone happens to accept, thats an outlier and the user who accepted is now the one having a hard time. Ive literally added a rule on my op trades saying "im not valuing overpriced items by current bp price". That all because i get offered overpriced items quite a lot.

 

Anyways, im really hyped by the event, cant wait! Crimson out. o/

Those are overpriced cause of the before mentioned all class crate and the mass unboxing of it, overal simply because of the increased supply of 1st gen all class hats that used to be rare.

[Jessica]

I decided to take back what I said originally about removing the duped tag after talking to a few friends (and reading some replies here).

if the duped tag was to be removed a lot of hats would crash in price as there are so many that were highly duped. I also feel people have the right to know if their hat has multiple of it. A lot of people care about duped items whether people like it or not. I have to admit I am one of those people who care if my item is duped especially when I'm keeping the item.

 

Anyhow - I say you raise the dupe limit to 50-100 keys I still say anything over 100 is a bad decision.

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

Those are overpriced cause of the before mentioned all class crate and the mass unboxing of it, overal simply because of the increased supply of 1st gen all class hats that used to be rare.

Oh yeah, that disaster happened when i took a 6 month break from tf2. I pretty much fully understand that now.

[JasonFunderberker]

Ive priced quite a few taunts in the last couple of weeks, does that mean theyre pointless now? Or will be i able to post the same suggestion after the wipe and have it accepted? 

[Marty Birdman]

I read this post right before work, and without time to respond I spent my entire shift mulling these things over. I think my stance towards some of the proposed changes is a bit softer as a result.

1. Wipe prices prior to March 2015 - It pains me to say so because I like for as many hats as possible to be priced, but I think this does more good than harm, and it has my lukewarm support. I have to nitpick it though - this should be prices prior to AND INCLUDING March 2015. Buds were removed as a currency at the end of March 2015, and in the last month that buds served as a currency their value was low enough that while the conversion rate may not have been inflating prices anymore, it was definitely still warping them. Stormy 13th Beak for 88 keys anyone? If you're going to strike all the old inflated prices that's fine, but please at least remove that lone month's worth of deflated prices as well.

2. Wipe prices of unusual taunts - This one's more of an urgent fix than the former, with even fairly recent taunt prices holding little relevance, and markets crowded with sellers on top of that. I would support wiping all taunt prices that have been influenced by the introduction of unusualifiers specifically, while leaving the rest alone. If I were a Phantasm/Ghosts taunt collector, and all of my taunts had their prices wiped to fix a problem that didn't even apply to them, I'd be pretty pissed off. You'd have to cherry pick somewhat to implement the fairest solution possible here.

3. Eliminate the distinction between duped and clean in unusual suggestions - I don't support this proposed change. I see duped status continuing to be treated as a relevant factor by the trading community as a whole, so I don't buy the claim that it has become irrelevant simply because dupes are no longer being introduced to the market. I can definitely think of certain examples where the current rules for how dupes are treated allow misleading prices to stay on the record - Cloudy Moon Officer's Ushanka for example - but instances like this could also be resolved by wiping ancient prices, which I've given my support for. Frequently pricing hats with duped sales would provide bad points of comparison for people attempting to estimate the value of like effects, in the same way that leaving 5 year old prices on the books does now. If the ENTIRE market for a hat is based on duped copies, I'm fine with using them to price it, but that's how things work already, so... basically I'm saying change nothing.

~~~~~

A separate but related recommendation that I've been pondering for a while - backpack.tf's visual design does a very poor job of communicating the difference between current and outdated prices. If the site's goal is to provide accurate information for what hats are worth, the little red triangle in the bottom left of the image doesn't really cut it when it comes to differentiating an outdated price from a current one. For any of us who use the site often and are well-informed about its inner-workings this might seem like a non-issue, but anyone that's new to trading or who uses the site casually is more likely to pay attention to the numbers themselves than anything else, and the numbers on their own are misleading. A bigger or clearer icon, superimposing the actual word "outdated" over the image in lieu of using the red triangle at all, adding a tag when hovered over that indicates that the price is outdated and/or states how long ago the price was applied - honestly, pretty much anything would help here. You can wipe prices and host pricing events all you want, but at the end of the day every price on here is in jeopardy of becoming outdated eventually, so making sure that any user of the site can easily spot the difference would be a good supplemental approach to take.