1. There is no such thing as a "pending" ban or Steam admin. Anyone threatening your account is a scammer trying to scare you. Read more.

Backpack.tf price maipulation?

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by -=SLP=-EVILBOY4LIFE, May 12, 2013.

  1. Mr. Valentine

    Mr. Valentine New User

    Messages:
    75
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:50959178
    Agreed, it truly is unfortunate that a lot of people think every price is set in stone due to a site. Ah cest le vie.
  2. Burnt Waflles

    Burnt Waflles New User

    Messages:
    66
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:32594014
    I agree, that is why I gave my example of a "general" price checking site, instead of a specific price for each item. The hope would be that, new players could lump the value of their items to other items, giving them somewhere to start, and then encouraging them to check facts for specific values. Although it would probably never work
  3. Burnt Waflles

    Burnt Waflles New User

    Messages:
    66
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:32594014
    In general the only thing i find useful about pricing sites, and what i use them for, is a quick check to see if a hat i am not familiar with is valuable or not. I never use it to find an exact price.
  4. -=SLP=-EVILBOY4LIFE

    -=SLP=-EVILBOY4LIFE New User

    Messages:
    6
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:44531772
    If the ones voting would look at rarity since rarity DOES dictate price, it would be alot more accurate. If the world voted on the price of oil, do you think gas would be as high as it is at the moment? The point is, this is not how a market should be run. Also, people lately have been using only backpack.tf or nothing at all, just going with the flow. I believe steam should make the market prices even though it is a free market. It would just make a lot more sense for them to make a price system that is kind of like the one for Runescape or something like that. Keys are the main thing, it is a major currency in this game and there is no reason for the price to go up as far as it has, they are still $2.50 on the mann. co. store.
  5. VenGanZa

    VenGanZa User

    Messages:
    1,663
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:32312479
    Steam does, it is called the MARKETPLACE, and shows ACTUAL REAL WORLD SALES, in other words what people have actually paid and thus what people actually value things for.

    Anything but recent real world sales data is smoke and mirrors, not much good for anything but guesswork. However people are far too lazy to research prices.
  6. Clive

    Clive SteamRep Admin

    Messages:
    6,571
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:43668349
    Rarity is only one of many factors for a price.

    That would require steam to monitor every single transaction between players to make sure they sell and buy items are the provided price. That would make absolutely no sense, as you stated it is a free market.

    The reason they are changing is because they are changing in respect to metal (more like just one reason, there are multiple).
    VenGanZa likes this.
  7. Rico Lambrini

    Rico Lambrini New User

    Messages:
    62
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:39847655
    a lot of things should have a set price, as we dont like uncertainties. dear items like unusuals have a range, which is desirable, however dear stranges have a much smaller range.

    would the tf2 demography has something to do with it, or can we find out tf2 demography?
  8. Dronefly

    Dronefly Caution on SteamRep

    Messages:
    353
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:41413966
    I agree that price ranges should be set. I noticed over the past almost 2 years of trading that every item has the same characteristic. There are the "quick sellers" which either are scammers unloading, people who don't care for that scrap / rec difference because they just want their loadout to play and not profit trading, the traders who are in it for the "profit" and the guys who just simply think that they can get overpriced payments on all their items. Perhaps the way pricing should work is: 1.33-2 (1.44) where the 20%-20% price ranges are shown and the bracketed is the highest peak percentage of trades. This will allow for variety and also show a "trend" of common pricing to show where the most common pricing is going (up or down). Also, I believe that EVERY SINGLE item in the list (backpack.tf or spreadsheet or whatever source you use) should have a date "last recorded change" so that people understand when they see items listed at a key and they are all selling for 1.33 ref it is because the last time the price was recorded was 3-4 weeks before or 3-4 hours before. This is important to help stabilize certain items. The only reason keys have gone up from what I have seen in the really recent future is the fact that when keys were stable at 2.33 and then at 2.66 and then at 3 (after that it just kept climbing) is the fact that on sites like outpost there used to be 20+ pages of keys for sale so everyone kept to more or less the same price. When today you get 2-3 pages max. This causes a continual price increase because no one is selling keys on outpost and such anymore. Instead, they are all flocking over to marketplace and dumping them there for steam wallet money.

    Initially most thought this would be "well who wants limited money on steam only" but guess what, majority are happy getting that money and buying games. In fact, the only thing that has been plummeting is the resell of games for TF2 items. That market is impossible to make money in. Today all is sold for a loss with the whole idea that "I sold my key on marketplace for more then I would have for paypal so I dont mind taking a hit on the game to cash it out for keys again".

    All this is my personal speculation from analyzing the market over the last few months but this is where i see the trends going. Perhaps less people would complain if it had more of an explanation but most likely people are just people and will always be unhappy. I know I personally am VERY unhappy with the pricing on haunteds on backpack.tf because I have NO problem selling for WAY more then listed there and people say they cant find items for as cheap as they are listed on there so either their prices are outdated (from the time when the halloween item dump occured around janaury-march) or they are getting their facts from the wrong place.
  9. Brad Pitt

    Brad Pitt Backpack.tf founder

    Messages:
    75
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:42768607
    First of all, http://backpack.tf is a pricing guide; It's not a bible. We don't force you to use these prices when you trade, but we provide you with a guideline of what people agreed on the item's value. You can sell for more or less if you want, it's really up to you.

    What people don't seem to realize is that running a site like this is quite intensive. We have a rather small admin team that takes care of "sanitizing" the suggestions and ensuring things don't blow up. There were 4067 suggestions in the past 4 weeks only. Divide that by the amount of staff (9) and that's an incredible amount of work. It's possible things fall through the cracks sometimes, nobody is perfect, but we all do our best to ensure everything is done in a timely manner. If I could automate pricing with no possible user manipulation, I'd do it.

    If you have solutions on how the site could improve, we're more than happy to listen -- there's actually a suggestions forum on backpack.tf . The site has become successful largely due to listening to user feedback so I invite anyone who wants to see improvements to participate on there.
    Sjru and DataStorm like this.
  10. DataStorm

    DataStorm Retired Staff

    Messages:
    3,437
    Any price indicator I've seen so far is just that: a indication of the price. while its not exact, it wont be that a 1 key item will be listed as a 3 bud value. (exceptions on some of them other sites out there, but we know to not trust those)
  11. Oz' dak1ne

    Oz' dak1ne New User

    Messages:
    192
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:11020111
    This site is BS.
    Searching by yourself is the best way to see prices range. It's easy to get the price increase like some did about keys. And many upvote randomly to get credits, that's really stupid.
    Dunno why people allways need a reference, maybe too lazy to search by themselves the informations...
    :D
  12. Oz' dak1ne

    Oz' dak1ne New User

    Messages:
    192
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:11020111
    Sorry couldnt edit my previous post :
    look i'm trying to sell my burning Stove pipe for 7 buds, think it's quite fair
    on bp.tf it's valued at : 6.3-6.7 buds
    then when I search on outpost like your voters do i found those ones :
    http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10655240 no B/O
    http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/11128880 8 buds
    http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/10813210 8 buds
    http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/11262088 7 buds

    I dont see any in this price ranges of 6.3-6.7.
    If only i try to put my price on bp.tf, it's in the second later negative votes.
  13. Nathan Cash

    Nathan Cash New User

    Messages:
    109
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:45077164
    I think the tf2 economy is so messed up and backpack.tf makes it worse. Here is what really annoys me: Lets say buds are worth 25 keys and there is a hat that is priced on backpack.tf at 1 bud. This would mean that hat is worth 25 keys. Now lets say a bud goes up to 30 keys. Well guess what? The hat just went up in value 5 keys. This makes no sense to me. IF a hat is worth 25 keys, it is worth 25 keys. Now lets say a hat is priced at 25 keys and a bud is 25 keys. When the bud goes up to 30 keys there is no effect on the hat's price as it stays at 25 keys (the official backpack.tf price) I think it is good to have a ballpark estimate of what something is worth, but there are TONS of flaws with backpack.tf
  14. VenGanZa

    VenGanZa User

    Messages:
    1,663
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:32312479
    Price check sites are a "rough guide" nothing more.

    When I say "rough" I mean it, many of the figures you will see are patently nonsensical. I recall seeing a fairly new 1 of 1 hat on bp.tf, and a quick search via google showed it had never been offered by the owner on any site in the world, yet bp.tf managed to list a price, this alone shows that outside the good old bell curve things fall down :)
  15. Clive

    Clive SteamRep Admin

    Messages:
    6,571
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:43668349

    That is because backpack.tf accepts its suggestions based on evidence of offers or sales. The links you posted do not have offers of 7-8 buds on them, or they would have most likely taken them (which of course is a problem with backpack.tf). People often make their b/o higher than the price they want to try and get a higher price for their item. Having been on backpack.tf, I can tell you from experience that if you made a suggestion like this you would get multiple comments saying "b/o ≠ price, downvote". They have suggestions on their forums on how to make a good suggestion.
    Dronefly likes this.
  16. Oz' dak1ne

    Oz' dak1ne New User

    Messages:
    192
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:11020111
    100% Agree with that example.
  17. ForteSP

    ForteSP New User

    Messages:
    877
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:32783182

  18. Clive

    Clive SteamRep Admin

    Messages:
    6,571
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:43668349
  19. DataStorm

    DataStorm Retired Staff

    Messages:
    3,437
    ehm, thats never found ones, doesn't mean they don't exist. that may be due:
    - never scanned the backpack where they in
    - private backpack
    - unboxed recently
  20. Clive

    Clive SteamRep Admin

    Messages:
    6,571
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:0:43668349
    I've never seen a noh mercy with a Halloween effect, many people believe they don't/ will never exist (not saying this is true), but none the less you are right, I should have wrote according to the site that put prices on them.