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. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

    Messages:
    76,831
    SteamRep Admin:
    STEAM_0:1:34690691
    Due to the over whelming issues be it not working or just pretty much as things mentioned in this thread we have removed DrKays backpack-tf plugin which utilized this site. I just can't sit here and use something that gets information that is so watered down that it makes me wanna punch kittens. The inflation of keys has caused a ripple effect thru-out TF2 Economy that I don't believe it will ever calm back to pre-2013 levels.

    I don't recommend anyone use any type of site,spreadsheet or reference page for TF2 item values - its a trade system not a buy/sell system. The idea is to trade for something from another person you both like and would enjoy but for some reason this idea got shot to hell way back when Valve decided to never adjust key prices in the store...if they would just do that one time for a sale I would imagin things would go back down, way down and be more realistic.
  2. AcesGamer

    AcesGamer User

    Messages:
    1,141
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:19877328
    Except this is wrong. The way the website is set up, the way prices are dictated, and the way the community (and especially admins) participate in suggestions makes it very much like a bible, and not merely a reference. A good example is key prices: Whenever a new price is set, every single outpost trade jumps up to follow the "guideline". Anything set lower immediately gets flamed or shut down. You may think high and mighty of your website, but that's not how the community sees it.

    In addition to this, you cannot advertise the website as "community driven prices", when it's quite the opposite; Absolutely incompetent admins dictate whether their opinion (which is much better and informed than the rest of the community, obviously) overrides proof given by actual traders. Coming to mind are key suggestions accepted where 20 or so handpicked trades where people are selling for 0.11 more, is considered enough proof to raise the price ceiling, when those trades are in reality an exception. (Mind you these suggestions also had somewhere near -800 votes) Now I know your answer to this will be: "Admins accept suggestions on proof provided, not on community votes", and that's fine, except 20, or even 30 or 40 trades out of mere thousands is NOT the majority of what the entire community is currently selling/buying for.

    The exact same goes for unusuals: "proof provided" is mostly c/o's that may have been on impulse, or shady offers. In fact, to test this myself, a while ago I made a suggestion on the price of my Eerie Swagman's Swatter to raise it to around 5 buds, showing my outpost trade as proof. The only time I had been offered 5 buds was in cash by a shady individual that I rejected. Guess what? The suggestion was accepted.

    I'd even go as far as to say that backpack.tf is the worst website in the TF2 community (trust me, that's a pretty hard award to get). The original intention behind it being a more fair and community driven "spreadsheet", but it just turned out to be quite the opposite -- Incompetent admins deemed as the most trustworthy pricecheckers, corruption by key traders (Just go and review old key suggestions to see for yourself), ridiculous advertisement and plugins being put everywhere, further enforcing this "Bible" concept, etc.

    Thanks for everything you've created, I'm sure we're all much better off now than we were before.
    Dronefly, Sjru, kalasnikov and 2 others like this.
  3. Maddux

    Maddux New User

    Messages:
    100
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:20658158
    I started out using backpack.tf and i still will. I don't care a ton about value of an item, that's not what i took out of trading when i joined steam. As stated before, trading should be if you both like the hat/item then make the trade. Nobody is shoving backpack.tf down your throat, hell make your own website that dictates prices. Backpack.tf helps out newer traders with just some sort of basis of item prices, after you learn some base prices, you can figure out prices of other things quite easily, you can make your own prices if you want, nobody is stopping you. Nobody is stopping you from going to outpost and making a trade to buy buds for 10 keys, the fact that a website is there telling you the price of an item is what ever they decide should not dictate how you make your trades, the reason it does is there is so many people using the site that its become a center for item prices. "Don't believe everything you see on the internet, its not always true", did-int we all learn that when we were younger? Figure out your own prices, don't get spoon feed them
  4. [P+] ThePyro

    [P+] ThePyro New User

    Messages:
    32
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:52015796
    ^this! And hi, aces.
  5. kalasnikov

    kalasnikov New User

    Messages:
    15
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:24515644
    King also approves.
  6. Dronefly

    Dronefly Caution on SteamRep

    Messages:
    353
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:41413966
    I have to add something: If you want this site to be regarded as more accurate and fair you have to work on different basis.

    Recommended Stipulations:
    1 - PERCENTAGE BASED PRICE CHANGES - If you are going to base a price change you should consider at LEAST 30-40% of trades to be true in this basis. This is important because of situations like keys. THERE WILL ALWAYS be people who are unboxing and dont care about 1-2 scraps difference or are cashing out backpacks (such as myself) and dont mind paying AT THE TIME that extra scrap or 2 for volume ref conversion to keys. IT DOES NOT MEAN I and others like myself have set a new key price. There are HUNDREDS of keys trading PER HOUR. HOW can you say that in a 1 week period 50 trades of 1-2 scraps more warrants a raise in key prices.
    2 - LAST RECORDED PRICE CHANGE - You must state the last time the price got recorded as such and have a track history on the main preview (most people use the search function with the quick pop-up results, should have a link to see "trending pattern" or something similar).
    3 - STOP CONFUSING WITH CLASSIFIEDS - If you are a price sheet site and you have "trades" section you should not list it in the front page which many confuse to be the current prices instead of being market requests. I had a HUGE fight on more then one occassion with idiots who can not distinguish between "classified" ads where anyone can set any price and actual "factual" guides as you state.
    4 - GET RID OF PUBLIC CREDIT POINTS - Sheep always get hearded by this. You get someone with many "rep" points who may not necessarily be a reputable trader, just an active price suggestor. You can have admins review their rep for guidance, but having the masses see rep only drives false votes which in turn help sway many admins decisions. I understand due to public scrutiny you guys are "Trying" to monitor key price and bud price changes, but I am pretty sure with the volume of suggestions you have many "suggestions" are falsely accepted just by seeing multiple "reputable" traders voting on the price change.
    5 - LIMIT THE NUMBER OF PRICE CHANGES - If an item is hot, it can stay hot, there is no need to shift market pricing due to a day or two spike due to certain criteria that diminish shortly after (unless rule 1 supercedes this rule). Do not change prices more often then X amount of days apart. Let the demand REMAIN before deciding to adjust a price.
    6 - FORCE PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR PRICES ARE AND WHY THEY ARE THERE - Change the way your site shows the prices and what they represent by putting tags such as "suggested" or "approximately". Also, allowing your plug-ins everywhere should have those sites (mandatorily) leave a tag such as "suggested" or "approximately" next to every price advertised. The problem is that if you do not educate others of these, although senior players who have seen your site come to fruition from day 1 know this, new players threaten to REPORT for "SCAMMING" because I do not follow your pricing EXACTLY. They are completely CLUELESS to who you are and what your service represents. You need to take out assumptions and spell it out to everyone ALL THE TIME. You are the only ones in control of keeping this economy from derailing by fixing these flaws. You are trusted by FAR too many not to make such changes. STEAMREP has CONSTANTLY changed their policies and their "sentencing" methods as the community evolved and started trusting them more. You need to do the same instead of defend your site as "we try as hard as we can". That's not good enough. You want the trust people give you, you want to be the forefront of priceguides in the community. You want to GENUINELY help the community and service it, then do it. Don't fight the communities suggestions, dont fight the senior trusted community traders and admins. WORK WITH US, NOT AGAINST US!
    Sjru likes this.
  7. McCreW

    McCreW New User

    Messages:
    510
    As do I agree.

    Many of the sites that are currently out there for "prices" are very off and misleading. I do not use these sites because of this, personally if you need a good price on something ask through the community to get a more accurate price.
  8. ForteSP

    ForteSP New User

    Messages:
    877
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:32783182
    Just wanna drop this here.. .http://backpack.tf/vote/id/51bc67ecba2536a152000001 Price changed the harvest bubble pipe, 75% acceptance. (your bp has to have been equal or greater than the suggested price to vote on it). that's 10 out of 13 extremely experienced traders accepting the price and the mod blocks it.

    Backpack.tf moderators are officially biased in their opinions.