[Suggestion] Ability to submit trade info for pricing

[Esteban]

Is there any way to implement an ability for people to add individual trades they've made or know about to an item's page, rather than waiting for someone to do it all themselves in a price suggestion?

 

E.g. I buy a 1 of 5 unusual for 100 keys, but I don't have premium or have the resources to easily find out what the other ones have sold for in the past, so I can't easily make a suggestion. Instead, I post the details of the trade in the same way as I would in a price suggestion (but under a separate heading, eg 'Past Trades'), and people can see it on the page. That way there's greater transparency in item value, especially for new people and others without premium who don't really know how to hunt down that info. 

 

Any potential for exploitation (eg convincing someone an item is worth more or less than it actually is because someone made a wacky trade) can be mitigated by letting people comment on trades in the same way as suggestions. In any case the info is already out there, it's just not very easy to find right now.

 

It just seems like the current pricing model isn't working very well given the work involved in pricing and the sheer volume of new items. So much stuff sits unpriced for years despite a dozen or more trades being made, because it's simply too difficult to wrangle it all. If we even had a portion of that info readily available I think that would help both regular users and pricers.

[PlantFoodClock]

 

[`Yahiamice]

Agreed. It's a shame that reporting a sale is limited to these very archaic forums, as it'd be a great help to have directly on the item's stat page/suggestion page.

[Sir Spoon The Second]

you can also get in contact with price mod and or get in contact with someone that does a lot of suggestions/backpack discord and or just make the suggestion and have people comment other recent movements in the comments

its annoying yes but that's just how it is

 

[Gaia]

or just make the suggestion anyway, knowing full well it won’t get accepted. people can still see failed suggestions. At the end of the day it’s just a funny number on your profile of how many you got right/wrong. 

[Apo]

4 hours ago, Goyman Sachs said:

or just make the suggestion anyway, knowing full well it won’t get accepted. people can still see failed suggestions. At the end of the day it’s just a funny number on your profile of how many you got right/wrong. 

pro strat for getting an item updated is to submit an incorrect suggestion, and someone will correct you

it does have to appear somewhat real though, obviously fake suggestions won't inspire this

[Esteban]

Thanks for all the suggestions of worse and less convenient ways to get around this problem but I put this in the suggestions area for a reason

 

I'm not looking for tips on getting things priced, I'm just suggesting adding another way to do things.  If anyone has any thoughts on the suggestion itself that would be helpful.

 

Of course unlikely to happen regardless given there's only one dev but that's true of anything in this part of the forum.

 

[ClockworkKitten]

15 hours ago, Sir Spoon The Second said:

you can also get in contact with price mod and or get in contact with someone that does a lot of suggestions/backpack discord and or just make the suggestion and have people comment other recent movements in the comments

its annoying yes but that's just how it is

 

Every time I tried this in the past, I'd either get ignored, told they don't do requests, or told they only price particular things. I appreciate their work and all, but this suggestion just seems better than the way things are.
 

I think this would be very useful, and I personally would love it if something like this were implemented, especially if it were added straight to the item stat page.
Bonus points If it's able to have a section where you can add the date of trade to your post, then auto-delete when it goes out of date.
Reduces people trying to hunt down price suggesters and makes it easier for people trying to price things.
Could do things like help reduce cases of unusable sales with the compares being out of whack because most people buy keys just before trading for an item or sell keys just after trading for an item.

[Esteban]

5 hours ago, ClockworkKitten said:

Every time I tried this in the past, I'd either get ignored, told they don't do requests, or told they only price particular things. I appreciate their work and all, but this suggestion just seems better than the way things are.
 

I think this would be very useful, and I personally would love it if something like this were implemented, especially if it were added straight to the item stat page.
Bonus points If it's able to have a section where you can add the date of trade to your post, then auto-delete when it goes out of date.
Reduces people trying to hunt down price suggesters and makes it easier for people trying to price things.
Could do things like help reduce cases of unusable sales with the compares being out of whack because most people buy keys just before trading for an item or sell keys just after trading for an item.

Thanks for that. I've noticed an increasing number of unusable trades in price suggestions recently too. Like 5 trades and 4 of them are 'idk lol'. I really think making the ability to add trades and see trades easily accessible (not in a half-dead forum post) could help there. 

 

Regarding auto-deletion, that's an interesting idea. Given old rejected price suggestions stay there forever I assumed even old trades could still be helpful, but it could get unwieldy. Maybe based on the number made it could bump off older ones as new ones get added.

[PlantFoodClock]

TBH, I don't think it would change much. Most people wouldn't care to report their sales unless there was a reward for doing so. Only those who care about increasing their BP value (or having an accurate value) will likely report their sales. Not everyone care about price suggestions or backpack.tf in general (they just like collecting hats they like).  If someone really wanted to report their sales, there are already many avenues to do so (Forums page, BP discord suggestion discussion section, DMing). 

[Esteban]

2 minutes ago, PlantFoodClock said:

TBH, I don't think it would change much. Most people wouldn't care to report their sales unless there was a reward for doing so. Only those who care about increasing their BP value (or having an accurate value) will likely report their sales. Not everyone care about price suggestions or backpack.tf in general (they just like collecting hats they like).  If someone really wanted to report their sales, there are already many avenues to do so (Forums page, BP discord suggestion discussion section, DMing). 

 

 

The reason you would do it is to help others, it wouldn't increase your bp value because it wouldn't create a new price (except when the info is used to make a new suggestion). At most it should replace the little SCM value at the top of the page, which is worse than useless for unusuals. 

 

If people need to get happy clappy points to be nice people then that's easy enough to do, you already get points for making and voting on suggestions.

 

You can also use spite as a motivator. Eg, someone is selling something for 300 keys, it'll be a bit harder for them to try trick newbies and whales about its value if you can make it visible to anyone that they bought it for 50 keys.

 

It seems like you think pricing is largely useless, why do we even bother going through an this effort to price stuff anyway if it's so irrelevant? Obviously it serves a purpose, so why not make things more transparent. Even if not many people did it, that's still better than nobody doing it.

[PlantFoodClock]

38 minutes ago, Esteban said:

The reason you would do it is to help others, it wouldn't increase your bp value because it wouldn't create a new price (except when the info is used to make a new suggestion). At most it should replace the little SCM value at the top of the page, which is worse than useless for unusuals. 

 

If people need to get happy clappy points to be nice people then that's easy enough to do, you already get points for making and voting on suggestions.

 

You can also use spite as a motivator. Eg, someone is selling something for 300 keys, it'll be a bit harder for them to try trick newbies and whales about its value if you can make it visible to anyone that they bought it for 50 keys.

 

It seems like you think pricing is largely useless, why do we even bother going through an this effort to price stuff anyway if it's so irrelevant? Obviously it serves a purpose, so why not make things more transparent. Even if not many people did it, that's still better than nobody doing it.

 

I'm just saying I'm not sure if the feature would get much use. Taking into account all sales that are used in price suggestions (including untraceable ones), they are all trades that could have been reported one way or another but the parties involved decided not to and compares are used in place of screenshots. 

 

As a price suggestor who does it for fun/to help people value their hats, I would love more transparency and additional data points when making suggestions, but in reality, most people just want to trade and aren't concerned with the creation of price suggestions.

[`Yahiamice]

1 hour ago, PlantFoodClock said:

TBH, I don't think it would change much. Most people wouldn't care to report their sales unless there was a reward for doing so. Only those who care about increasing their BP value (or having an accurate value) will likely report their sales. Not everyone care about price suggestions or backpack.tf in general (they just like collecting hats they like).  If someone really wanted to report their sales, there are already many avenues to do so (Forums page, BP discord suggestion discussion section, DMing). 

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

This is an idea I've definitely thought of and brought up in the past and I'm a little hazy on the memories but I recall the main issue was it being another portion of the site that had to be moderated. Now we have another avenue where shitposters can troll with inaccurate screenshots, compare links, random stuff but it's also connected to the whole "making a suggestion".

 

I agree, it would be great to see when a new sale happens as a price suggestor but frankly, I don't really think having it as a feature baked into the site is the right way forward. It's been mentioned in the thread already but I'll reiterate that if someone really wants to price something, either they'll do it themselves and more experienced suggestors will comment advice or they'll reach out accordingly via steam, dms, suggestion-discussion, forums etc.

 

It's a nice idea but I doubt there's any real value to implementing it because it just creates more work moderating it and might just kinda be pointless to add.

[Sir Spoon The Second]

18 hours ago, Esteban said:

The reason you would do it is to help others, it wouldn't increase your bp value because it wouldn't create a new price

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/65b7f0159f4292a6f50ceb7d

original price 25 keys 3 years ago, bought it for 85 keys, backpack value went up by 60 keys 

having a fairly decent sized backpack it was noticeable.....very noticeable

 

its a good idea don't get me wrong but its only useful for unusual and really rare non-unusual items

even then like 94%-98% of people that submit a unusual or rare non-unusual price suggestion a month don't have bp premium so this will only help the roughly 6%-2% of price suggesters

even then just posting the suggestion and waiting for someone that does a lot of price suggestions to post item history's for you to look into is not the best but is also not the worst thing to do and is actual quite effective

 

in total its just not worth it to have this feature implemented as there are so many different ways to get to get the info needed without bp premium

if it was more like 75%-85% that I would be on board with this but seeing as the number is soo low its just not worth it as there are other and routes to go

even if the person that made the suggestion doesn't make a new one it at least brings it to our attention and someone that does a lot of price suggestions can pick it up and do it so the price doesn't get more outdated

 

[Esteban]

1 minute ago, Sir Spoon The Second said:

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/65b7f0159f4292a6f50ceb7d

original price 25 keys 3 years ago, bought it for 85 keys, backpack value went up by 60 keys 

having a fairly decent sized backpack it was noticeable.....very noticeable

 

its a good idea don't get me wrong but its only useful for unusual and really rare non-unusual items

even then like 94%-98% of people that submit a unusual or rare non-unusual price suggestion a month don't have bp premium so this will only help the roughly 6%-2% of price suggesters

even then just posting the suggestion and waiting for someone that does a lot of price suggestions to post item history's for you to look into is not the best but is also not the worst thing to do and is actual quite effective

 

in total its just not worth it to have this feature implemented as there are so many different ways to get to get the info needed without bp premium

if it was more like 75%-85% that I would be on board with this but seeing as the number is soo low its just not worth it as there are other and routes to go

even if the person that made the suggestion doesn't make a new one it at least brings it to our attention and someone that does a lot of price suggestions can pick it up and do it so the price doesn't get more outdated

 

The main utility would be for normal traders, not for pricers. What is the goal of pricing? Theoretically, anyway, the goal is to make it easier to see how much an item is worth. That's what I want to help with, given most unusuals sit with no value listed for months or years. 

 

Big time traders have access to huge amounts of info about trading histories etc, and an incredibly vast knowledge of the desirability of certain effects. Smaller traders only have some of that, so it's harder to find out what's a good deal or not for certain things. In my experience they rely on existing prices and price suggestions quite a lot, so having more of that type of information readily available could be useful. 

 

For non-traders, we know bp pages are often used for sharking using buy orders. Eg look here people are willing to buy this for 60 but I'm so nice I'll buy it for 80, when it's obvious to experienced traders it's worth like 3x that or more. This wouldn't prevent that completely but it's one way that could protect people. That newbie won't be so easily convinced if they can clearly see one sold for 300.

 

Again of course the utility would be limited by how much it's used but anything is better than nothing, surely.

 

17 hours ago, ajdislikesyournamingpolicy said:

This is an idea I've definitely thought of and brought up in the past and I'm a little hazy on the memories but I recall the main issue was it being another portion of the site that had to be moderated. Now we have another avenue where shitposters can troll with inaccurate screenshots, compare links, random stuff but it's also connected to the whole "making a suggestion".

 

I agree, it would be great to see when a new sale happens as a price suggestor but frankly, I don't really think having it as a feature baked into the site is the right way forward. It's been mentioned in the thread already but I'll reiterate that if someone really wants to price something, either they'll do it themselves and more experienced suggestors will comment advice or they'll reach out accordingly via steam, dms, suggestion-discussion, forums etc.

 

It's a nice idea but I doubt there's any real value to implementing it because it just creates more work moderating it and might just kinda be pointless to add.

In terms of additional modding, it wouldn't be any more than that needed for price suggestions surely. I mean we have multiple people in this thread advocating for just making shit suggestions as an alternative. I don't see how this could cause more problems in that regard.

 

"If someone really wants to price something" ok but most of the time people don't really want to price something. They consider it, but it's annoying and not really worth it. Ultimately who cares, right? But if they could spend 2 minutes saying hey I bought/sold it for this, they might, because it would be much less hassle. Surely I'm not unique in feeling that way, especially when we have people suggesting requiring passing a goddamn exam before you're allowed to make a price suggestion.

[Sir Spoon The Second]

23 hours ago, Esteban said:

The main utility would be for normal traders, not for pricers. What is the goal of pricing? Theoretically, anyway, the goal is to make it easier to see how much an item is worth. That's what I want to help with, given most unusuals sit with no value listed for months or years. 

 

Big time traders have access to huge amounts of info about trading histories etc, and an incredibly vast knowledge of the desirability of certain effects. Smaller traders only have some of that, so it's harder to find out what's a good deal or not for certain things. In my experience they rely on existing prices and price suggestions quite a lot, so having more of that type of information readily available could be useful. 

 

For non-traders, we know bp pages are often used for sharking using buy orders. Eg look here people are willing to buy this for 60 but I'm so nice I'll buy it for 80, when it's obvious to experienced traders it's worth like 3x that or more. This wouldn't prevent that completely but it's one way that could protect people. That newbie won't be so easily convinced if they can clearly see one sold for 300.

 

Again of course the utility would be limited by how much it's used but anything is better than nothing, surely.

 

In terms of additional modding, it wouldn't be any more than that needed for price suggestions surely. I mean we have multiple people in this thread advocating for just making shit suggestions as an alternative. I don't see how this could cause more problems in that regard.

 

"If someone really wants to price something" ok but most of the time people don't really want to price something. They consider it, but it's annoying and not really worth it. Ultimately who cares, right? But if they could spend 2 minutes saying hey I bought/sold it for this, they might, because it would be much less hassle. Surely I'm not unique in feeling that way, especially when we have people suggesting requiring passing a goddamn exam before you're allowed to make a price suggestion.

 

in the grand scheme of things this would only help very small amount of active traders that want to do a suggestion (how we define an active trader is up to you but regardless it wont effect much) 

there's already so many different places where you can get information on items not to mention how this would be implemented code wise

this still needs to be coded and tested witch will take x amount

 

in terms of moderation the, as you said it " it wouldn't be any more than that needed for price suggestions surely"

the price mods already got a lot on there plate and putting this on top of that could be to much and cause some price mods to resign putting more work on the price mods and didn't resign so we would need a separate set of moderators to look after it

 

this boils down to: do we need this or do we want this

 

we do not need this as stated time and time again there are so many different ways to get information on items and or price of items, and this is only effecting a very small percentage of people 

like I said if the percentage of people this would help was much greater this would be a need but the number is so small I don't see this working

quote "look here people are willing to buy this for 60 but I'm so nice I'll buy it for 80, when it's obvious to experienced traders it's worth like 3x that or more."

even with this system in place these situations will still happen, if the victim of this situation isn't gonna go on backpack forums, the backpack discord, or check other sites to see if this is a fair deal then how will this work

if someone isn't gonna take time to see if its a fair offer they most likely aren't going to use this feature

 

like I said its a good idea but with how many people this will help is already very low

if this feature does get implemented the already low percentage of people this will help will get lower but probably only by 1% max in my opinion if even that

 

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, in some situations this could help a lot but those are few and far between

 

[Esteban]

5 minutes ago, Sir Spoon The Second said:

 

in the grand scheme of things this would only help very small amount of active traders that want to do a suggestion (how we define an active trader is up to you but regardless it wont effect much) 

there's already so many different places where you can get information on items not to mention how this would be implemented code wise

this still needs to be coded and tested witch will take x amount

 

in terms of moderation the, as you said it " it wouldn't be any more than that needed for price suggestions surely"

the price mods already got a lot on there plate and putting this on top of that could be to much and cause some price mods to resign putting more work on the price mods and didn't resign so we would need a separate set of moderators to look after it

 

this boils down to: do we need this or do we want this

 

we do not need this as stated time and time again there are so many different ways to get information on items and or price of items, and this is only effecting a very small percentage of people 

like I said if the percentage of people this would help was much greater this would be a need but the number is so small I don't see this working

quote "look here people are willing to buy this for 60 but I'm so nice I'll buy it for 80, when it's obvious to experienced traders it's worth like 3x that or more."

even with this system in place these situations will still happen, if the victim of this situation isn't gonna go on backpack forums, the backpack discord, or check other sites to see if this is a fair deal then how will this work

if someone isn't gonna take time to see if its a fair offer they most likely aren't going to use this feature

 

like I said its a good idea but with how many people this will help is already very low

if this feature does get implemented the already low percentage of people this will help will get lower but probably only by 1% max in my opinion if even that

 

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, in some situations this could help a lot but those are few and far between

 

No no no, that's not what I meant. It's not about helping people make price suggestions, it's about helping traders see the value of things without anyone making a price suggestion. As a peripheral benefit it could help in the situation you're describing but that is not the focus. If someone puts a sale on a page, people can see the sale and get a better understanding of an item's potential value. Therefore whether or not any of that information is used to make a price suggestion, the information is there to help traders.