Community Market

(B_Montiel) #21

So far, except some event special skins, there’s nothing rare enough to be more expensive than an elite case. Even cobalt skins would be sold cheaper looking at the amount there are in player’s hands already. Keep in mind, in valve’s games, the items which are sold higher than the case price generally have a way below 0.1% chance to drop.

The only solution would be releasing the card market with a new generation of loadout cards and make everything people already had prior to this not tradable. This way, people won’t flood the market instantly with duplicates and old stuff which would ruin the pricing.

(bgyoshi) #22

@B_Montiel said:
The only solution would be releasing the card market with a new generation of loadout cards and make everything people already had prior to this not tradable. This way, people won’t flood the market instantly with duplicates and old stuff which would ruin the pricing.

That would completely defeat the purpose of the market as I believe people are looking to get rid of the dupes they have NOW for skins of events past that they wanted, AS WELL AS a solution for going forward.

(B_Montiel) #23

Yes it would, from a customer point of view. But their objective logically is to get prices at a minimum so the high quality cards remains way above the price of an elite case, which won’t be the case if you look at how many cards we have stockpiled.

That’s simple price over demand ratio : people will start selling them at a price which seems fair to them, and as long as people won’t sell their items they will lower the price. And I for sure consider that cobalt won’t sell for more than an elite case right at the start.

And that’s not even considering Dev’s share over trades. If I refer to percentage @MarsRover mentionned, which are true, SD would benefit from the trading system on cobalt if those are selling at roughly 50 $/€, which will never happen. But this does not consider that the market would definitely higher the sales volumes. Still, it requires a lot of work, for very few income guarantees. That’s surely why they did not dive into this.

And just look how Valve is held hostage from their own system : Yes, they stack 15% over each trades. But the only items selling for higher than a key and a crate and in the 0.0x % chance bracket and below. 99% of dota 2 and tf2 items are sold below 10 cents.

(neverplayseriou) #24

Anyone that would pay money for a cobalt is insane.

(Nail) #25

B_Montiel, 10 cents times several hundred thousand transactions a month is cash I’d take, thank you very much

(bgyoshi) #26

@neverplayseriou said:
Anyone that would pay money for a cobalt is insane.

And anyone that would pay money for Candy Crush is insane

But you know…

(rosully) #27

@B_Montiel Just questioning how money is made by Steam or SD through trades? There’s no money involved so I think you just mixed up the wording with selling in the market. That’s why I’ve suggested starting off with a trading system which I don’t really see how it can go wrong. People make their own decisions to trade what they want, and SD could even make an in game system, since so many people seem opposed to doing it over steam. There are clearly many issues, but they would be worked around if a market system was put into place. But a trading system seems harmless in my eyes.

(bgyoshi) #28

@rosully123 said:
That’s why I’ve suggested starting off with a trading system which I don’t really see how it can go wrong.

People sell NEOPOINTS (yes, on neopets), Runescape gold, TF2 hats, CS: GO skins, etc, for actual cash on third party market boards.

Trust me, if someone wants it, it has value, and someone will figure out a market price for it. Even if it’s as simple as “Pay me over Paypal and I’ll trade you my good card for your junk dupe.”

(Nail) #29

"That’s why I’ve suggested starting off with a trading system which I don’t really see how it can go wrong. "

no one will trade down,

don’t think Valve would allow SD to set up their own market , they insist on all commerce go through them

(rosully) #30

@bgyoshi Yes but that’s their own personal decision. Splash Damage wouldn’t be involved with that are therefore it wouldn’t affect the game. If someone is scammed, the game is not reliable for it.

(bgyoshi) #31

@rosully123 said:
@bgyoshi Yes but that’s their own personal decision. Splash Damage wouldn’t be involved with that are therefore it wouldn’t affect the game. If someone is scammed, the game is not reliable for it.

It’s not about scamming or not

For 1, the precedence that people can pay money for something specific will automatically set up a pay to win mindset even if that’s not really how it actually works in game.

For 2, Splash Damage is automatically involved by providing that system to players. Same reason why Steam was responsible for the CS: GO skin gambling fiasco not too long ago.

For 3, it creates an environment that people can earn money on. Which, as I said, attracts hackers and XP grinders into matches, which further degrades the integrity of the game for us regular players. And I’m pretty sure neither we nor SD want that.

(B_Montiel) #32

@rosully123 said:
@B_Montiel Just questioning how money is made by Steam or SD through trades? There’s no money involved so I think you just mixed up the wording with selling in the market. That’s why I’ve suggested starting off with a trading system which I don’t really see how it can go wrong. People make their own decisions to trade what they want, and SD could even make an in game system, since so many people seem opposed to doing it over steam. There are clearly many issues, but they would be worked around if a market system was put into place. But a trading system seems harmless in my eyes.

Ok sorry misread the functionality here, but since they’re in with steam, they’re sadly hand tied with them for everything of that sort, even trading. Or at least I’ve never seen any game going into trading/selling stuff on steam which is not using valve for those purposes. Probably valve is ok to deal with some customer service only if you’re going through them for anything money/value related.

@Nail said:
B_Montiel, 10 cents times several hundred thousand transactions a month is cash I’d take, thank you very much

I’d too. But there’s no way it’ll turn into 100 000ish volumes right now. Or at least 10 000$ for a month is a bad income for the required work. Anyway, bad balance here in my view.

I’d better see them actually improve the game than spending more time on side features, that won’t work at the release inevitably and create more anger.

(PorkyPerson) #33

@stayfreshshoe said:
Steam Community Market has been discussed, it’s not just as simple as turning it on however. There’s a huge amount of items which need to be taken into consideration before taking that step. We know that market/trading functionality is a desired feature within the community, but currently there are so many other features/bugs/content which need to be done before we can start to actively work on it.

Pretty funny, but what’s funnier is you guys would almost certainly sell more of these real money limited edition cards if people had or knew they could count on a market in the future.

Or shoot, just redo the whole loadout system so it doesn’t have so much trash in it. It’s the worst when you get a limited edition and then it’s a trash card.

(Nail) #34

see NO humour in it other than the fact people don’t seem to understand CM speak for “don’t hold your breath”

(ThunderZsolt) #35

@B_Montiel said:
Everything going through the steam market also passes through the steam taxes Valve takes on every sales. I don’t think it’s going to be a good profit return for SD in any way compared to the required work. And considering the amount of special/cobalt/obsidian most players already have in their hands (just watch a ranked pre-game presentation), prices will fall very quickly.

Valid point.

In my opinion if trading/market ever gets implemented, it should be limited to special edition cards, like ranked/event/obsidian skins - that way players couldn’t undercut the prices of a cobalt.

Also, cobalt cards are useful for fragments (during crafting weeks you can recycle them without losing fragments) while event cards have no use if you don’t like them, so another reason to exclude cobalt cards from trading.

Not sure how much work would it require to implement - the trading system is already there on steam, the cards are in SD’s database, only thing to do is sync the steam inventory with the dirty bomb inventory.
If the data structures are similar, it can be done quickly.

I agree that loadouts for unpopular mercs won’t have much value (those prices will drop quickly), but what about 1/player items?
I mean the trinkets from last year’s christmas event or the dockyard one, the one proxy loadout you’ve got after the shell shock update, and possibly whatever is in the contraband case.

(Nail) #36

“Not sure how much work would it require to implement”

and therein lies the problem, people here don’t understand what’s involved

(ThunderZsolt) #37

@Nail said:
“Not sure how much work would it require to implement”

and therein lies the problem, people here don’t understand what’s involved

Nice job grabbing that one sentence out of context. Let me elaborate a little:

Sure, I’m not a game designer, but as an electric engineer I had to study 4 semesters of programming, including database management. So yeah, I can estimate how long does it take to create the database from scratch fairly well, but that isn’t what we are talking about.

Valve got covered the whole trading and market stuff once you have a steam inventory, so all SD has to do is write a function that exports the tradeable stuff to steam, and refresh it when the game closes.
Believe it or not, DB already imports items from steam, namely the DLCs which only appear after restart, so they only have to modify that function to scan the whole steam inventory when launching the game.

I don’t know how the data structure of SD and Valve looks, this is why I wrote I’m not sure - it could take a week or 2 to code, another 2-4 weeks to test, and God knows how much time to sign the contract with Valve.

This way you would need to restart to be able to use traded items, but that is a fair price for not having to transport the whole database to steam like Dota or TF2. Warframe has this “hybrid” inventory already, so it does work.

Also, I don’t buy that (for example) the map designer team handles the database, so it wouldn’t delay content. Even then, writing this 2 (more like 1,5) functions take way less effort than creating a map.

TLDR: there is no trading/steam market, because the developers/publishers don’t want one. Even if it is not much work, it creates problems, and you can’t ignore the chance that market prices will drop, making SD losing profit - other posts in this thread covered it really well.

Saying “we don’t have the resources” is much shorter and it even looks better, no wonder this is the official statement. If they assign all their employees to other stuff then there is no free resource for this of course.

(Nail) #38

and you’re still wrong

(Runeforce) #39

Yes, this is a fantastic idea! This way I can use my hard earned (or payed for in cash wink wink) skins on casino betting sites, even though I am under the legal age for gambling. Pls SD, THIS NEEDS TO BE PRIORITIZED!