Automated Price Suggestion Algorithm

[Cringineer]

Surely, there must be a way to use the MASSIVE database of Backpack.tf and the countless inventory updates to figure out what the average price for things being sold are.

Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds. But would no doubt increase efficiency of the site.

Why are we still doing all the hard work of figuring out the spread on each item, when we can have a machine do it faster and all the data we need?

 

I hope the right people/person see's this

[Lexi]

There already are unofficial equivalents of this that use backpack.tf as a resource. Though for pricing that matters most - unusuals, often they're not traded enough to have accurate ballpark prices. I wish at the very least that without trade history prices could be updated like A lot of old halloween hats have values from years ago, but we know the worst of the worst hat with that effect goes for several hundred keys over that, It would be nice if effects had minimum prices ie if you have an outdated halloween hat for example it shows the 'at least x' where x is the market price for that effect. This issue happens on more than just halloween effects but its the most in your face.

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

Someone already had semi-automated suggestions awhile ago (generated the suggestion, user still posted it I think), I remember seeing them on home page every once in awhile, idk where they went.

[wersady]

[RussellSproutz]

I wish there was. It would definitely help the price moderators with this price suggestion load. It's definitely very tough.

[JayTuut]

3 hours ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Someone already had semi-automated suggestions awhile ago (generated the suggestion, user still posted it I think), I remember seeing them on home page every once in awhile, idk where they went.

 

I guess this is sort-of what gladiator suggestions are. But I am curious to who was making the semi-automated sugg's

[Bukz]

5 hours ago, Cringineer said:

Why are we still doing all the hard work of figuring out the spread on each item, when we can have a machine do it faster and all the data we need?

 

The actual answer is bp has a monopoly on this shit and will never let it go despite the dying economy lol

 

Edit: If you disagree have a gander at the issue tracker that has been completely abandoned by the devs.

[Onion-Turtle]

For commonly traded items like unique/strange items from cases the range between sell orders and buy orders is often more accurate than the suggested price. Fully automating it to be that price would still be very prone to manipulation though.
 

You could implement control algorithms that also take actual sale data, historic sale data and maybe even sale/listing data from SCM / marketplace tf to create a very sound automated pricing system. But at that point is it really worth all the effort?

 

Also as others have pointed out it is somewhat difficult with unusuals and uncommon items. With these items I’d personally be in favor of simply documenting sales instead of creating suggested prices in general.
 

I don’t think any serious traders take the suggested prices at face value but a lot of them (like me) will always check the suggestion(s) to see what the item sold for in the past (and under which circumstances).

[TheTexanTiger]

I think the biggest issue would be tolerances and frequency. 

 

Let's say an unusual gets priced at 150 keys, then the next day one quicksells for 145. Does the price automatically get a new suggestion? There would need to be some kind of tolerance for % changes in price, timing, etc.

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

17 hours ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Someone already had semi-automated suggestions awhile ago (generated the suggestion, user still posted it I think), I remember seeing them on home page every once in awhile, idk where they went.

https://backpack.tf/suggestion/6341577161e0a8b6ee02e49b

That would be suggestions posted by this user, formally known to the community as "Autumn", "Pootis", "Valence" and probably other names.

I remember it because I made the most recent suggestion on it and while finishing up and submitting the suggestion, I am always curious about how many sales the previous suggestions have for hats with a hell of a lot in existence like that bat hat and stumbled across it.

I think Autumn cashed out for the most part and left TF2.

 

For the actual premise of the suggestion, I think there's certainly a lot of data to sift through that contributes to the general burn out that both price suggestors and price mods go through.

Yeah if a machine can do the job better then it may as well in some use cases but I would love to see how a bot deals with mini train and determining buyout capping etc etc...

 

The tech is clearly out there though from as early as 2 years ago looking at the suggestion I linked.

[phenompak]

21 hours ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Someone already had semi-automated suggestions awhile ago (generated the suggestion, user still posted it I think), I remember seeing them on home page every once in awhile, idk where they went.

There was also this tampermonkey script I used for a while which generated non-unusual suggestions:

Example: https://backpack.tf/suggestion/58f0257ce338777fdd750b97

[Baloo]

On 8/6/2024 at 2:03 AM, Bukz said:

The actual answer is bp has a monopoly on this shit and will never let it go despite the dying economy lol

 

Edit: If you disagree have a gander at the issue tracker that has been completely abandoned by the devs.

 

Make a better product and people will use it. Before backpack.tf there was the TF2spreadsheet site where a guy manually updated a spreadsheet. He wrote a book about it in like 2015 or something.

[Bukz]

1 hour ago, Baloo said:

 

Make a better product and people will use it. Before backpack.tf there was the TF2spreadsheet site where a guy manually updated a spreadsheet. He wrote a book about it in like 2015 or something.

 

I used spreadsheet. I also made a ton of keys flipping bills hats because the spread was crazy at the time. I don't need to reinvent the wheel to say its flat.

[JayTuut]

On 8/7/2024 at 8:50 AM, phenompak said:

There was also this tampermonkey script I used for a while which generated non-unusual suggestions:

Example: https://backpack.tf/suggestion/58f0257ce338777fdd750b97

 

I'm so lost how this passed. There didnt seem to be any evidence for 1.44?

[Baloo]

10 hours ago, Bukz said:

I used spreadsheet. I also made a ton of keys flipping bills hats because the spread was crazy at the time. I don't need to reinvent the wheel to say its flat.

[Bukz]

3 hours ago, Baloo said:

 

There's the highly intelligent response we've all come to know and love from bp users.

[phenompak]

22 hours ago, JayTuut said:

 

I'm so lost how this passed. There didnt seem to be any evidence for 1.44?

It wasn't priced at 1.33-1.44, it was priced at "random craft hat" which currently is 1.33-1.44. I assume at the time the random craft hat price was 1.22-1.33