It seems weird to only be able to earn half of a badge in a game. I mean i understand they want to encourage trading, but I would like to eventually be able to earn the badge on my own too. Should work like tf2 drops...
It seems weird to only be able to earn half of a badge in a game. I mean i understand they want to encourage trading, but I would like to eventually be able to earn the badge on my own too. Should work like tf2 drops...
I think that would encourage too much idling just for cards. However, you can earn a badge on your own, without trading, eventually, if you really want to. After you have all the drops you can get for playing, you are eligible for booster packs, which arrive randomly, and contain three cards for one game. Two of those packs could get you to the cards you need for a badge.
Also, you could sell the cards you get for a game you don't want a badge for to get the money for cards for the game you do want the badge for.
I would like to know more about the chances for a booster drop, though. The FAQ says that it's based on the frequency of other players crafting badges, but it doesn't mention if it's tied to specific games. Like: am I going to get a TF2 booster only when people are crafting TF2 Badges, or am I selected to receive a badge, then the system randomly chooses which game I should get that badge for? Doesn't really make a big difference, but I'd be interested to know how it's working in the background.
There is a default drop rate of the booster packs and after you collect all of your drops for that specific game then you are eligible for a booster pack drop. The drop of the booster pack is determined by when another steam user crafts a badge for that game and the probability your steam account has of receiving a booster pack drop. The drop rate for booster packs increases as you reach level 20, +20% chance, and again every 10 levels afterwards until level 50, +100% chance so double the original. The extra piece of this is that you apparently must log into that account at least once a week to maintain the eligibility of that account thus keeping people from selling cards and gifting a game with cards out to another account and simply never logging into after the initial drops are used up to collect cards. Here is the steam page on this item.
The entire "you have to log into steam" is really ambiguous and has no finite definition simply an inferred one. If it is really as simple as logging in to maintain eligibility then some simple batch scripts that run in the middle of the night would meet the requirements and not really prevent people from parking steam accounts for booster drops. This coupled with the new type of badge introduced for the summer sale really shines a very negative light on me from valve considering they just turned their sale events which normally are a massive steam community event into pay to play since to get card drops from voting it is required that you are level 5 or higher, this excludes new steam users heavily and people who have not been actively involved in previous events.
Just for a fast run down I have a 3 year old steam account with a few games on it that are spares and not used it on any of the community events thus far. It is level 4 with 3 badges: 3 year-150xp, trading card tester-100xp, 10+ games-166xp. Granted that account could be converted to a lvl5+ account if I completed the community ambassador badge(200xp), or any card based badge, but that actually requires me using money in the community market and crafting a badge, can kill two birds with one stone on that requirement. Even on my main account I have Game Mechanic 250+ games-451xp and that does not get me to level five alone, 6 years on steam grants a weak 300xp. Topping this off I feel is all of my level 2 accounts that simply have trading card tester-100xp and one stop shopper 1+ game-112xp so that account is impossible to convert without buying a bunch of games or completing the ambassador badge plus crafting another badge.
I feel this really excludes certain people in the community and people just joining because of the sale which can be a very enticing carrot when new/young gamers realize how much money they could save or be able to finally afford a title they have been craving. This coupled with killing tf2 -textmode item drops and their semi-threat blog post about idling for weapons has caused me to think I might want to change where I buy some of my games from because I feel the weather on steam is turning a little south.
The drop of the booster pack is determined by when another steam user crafts a badge for that game
(emphasis mine)
Where did you find that information? I mean, that's what I'm assuming as well (at least, if I was in charge, that's what I'd do), but the FAQ doesn't actually say that explicitly.
Booster packs are granted randomly to eligible users as more badges are crafted by members of the community
The "that game" part is something I am inferring since booster packs are game specific and they use the same wording when you check how to earn more cards for a game on that specific badges page so that provides some more directed inference. However, it is still not statically defined the procedure for booster pack drops being initiated.
What I'd do to get that Bill's Hat back! Damn kid swindled me out of it! LOL, Honestly, this whole digital goods thing is a myserty to me. Paying real tangible money to obtain digital street cred, it's so bizzare, but I'm facinated by it. Looking at the sales earlier today I noticed games with cards, and they almost influanced me to buy cheap titles I really was not that interested in playing. I resisted, but it's a weird phychological trick. Adding value in absense of value?
The changes they just made to the market are interesting.
One may no longer buy commodity items from a specific other user. You may only 'place an order' for a card, and be anonymously matched with someone who is selling. Also, you are not allowed to pay more for an item than the current lowest price.
I'm guessing this will eliminate the occasional mysterious 300$ card sales, which I'm assuming was some kind of exploitation going on, though I can't imagine what it could have been. I'm sure it has a bunch of other effects on the dynamics of the market, but I'd need a more experienced steam trader to explain it, I think.
I wonder if this change will help keep prices for common items from bottoming out so fast. I don't see how it will, but it feels like a change needs to be made somewhere, since the current market listing system seems to encourage constantly decreasing prices for nearly all things.
I was always pretty sure those $300 for a single crappy item things were 15 year olds dealing drugs to their friends. It was an easy way to launder money.
The new trade system is only in use for the Summer cards as far as I can tell. Last year's winter sale ended in Valve deleting the globe cards on the marketplace at something like 100 per second minutes before the sale ended. The effect of that was that it seemed at first as if people were buying cards in droves last minute to complete badges. So scumbags like myself bought some at high prices with the intent at selling higher only to immediately find out they had blocked relisting that late in the sale even though you could still buy what was left. This time around they set it up so they can hit a single kill switch.
My understanding is that the new system is for all "commodity items" but while they are testing it out only the summer sale cards are "commodity items". Once they get the kinks worked out they'll be rolling it out to cards and more.
The angle I heard on this was to stop bots from buying and re-selling below-market items (arbitrage). You put in a buy order and they are filled in the order in which they were received. I suspect that the "stop prices from bottoming out" theory has some merit too - since Valve makes money on every transaction. They have an incentive to keep marketplace prices from crashing.
I don't know about like TF2 hats or whatever, but it's not just summer cards. All of the cards and emoticons I searched for used the new search results page with
This item is a commodity, where all the individual items are effectively identical. Individual listings aren't accessible; you can instead issue orders to buy at a specific price, with the cheapest listing getting automatically matched to the highest buy order.
on it.
'amature hour money laundering' was also my guess as to the nature of 300$ cards. I would suppose that's something that Steam doesn't really want to be a part of, even when they're getting a nice commision.
@PirateNinja said:
It was an easy way to launder money.
I cannot for the life of me find where I read this, but it was almost essentially this reason. They're trying to get ahead of it before it becomes a larger issue.
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Need:
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Sniper
Trade Here
Also, you could sell the cards you get for a game you don't want a badge for to get the money for cards for the game you do want the badge for.
I would like to know more about the chances for a booster drop, though. The FAQ says that it's based on the frequency of other players crafting badges, but it doesn't mention if it's tied to specific games. Like: am I going to get a TF2 booster only when people are crafting TF2 Badges, or am I selected to receive a badge, then the system randomly chooses which game I should get that badge for? Doesn't really make a big difference, but I'd be interested to know how it's working in the background.
The entire "you have to log into steam" is really ambiguous and has no finite definition simply an inferred one. If it is really as simple as logging in to maintain eligibility then some simple batch scripts that run in the middle of the night would meet the requirements and not really prevent people from parking steam accounts for booster drops. This coupled with the new type of badge introduced for the summer sale really shines a very negative light on me from valve considering they just turned their sale events which normally are a massive steam community event into pay to play since to get card drops from voting it is required that you are level 5 or higher, this excludes new steam users heavily and people who have not been actively involved in previous events.
Just for a fast run down I have a 3 year old steam account with a few games on it that are spares and not used it on any of the community events thus far. It is level 4 with 3 badges: 3 year-150xp, trading card tester-100xp, 10+ games-166xp. Granted that account could be converted to a lvl5+ account if I completed the community ambassador badge(200xp), or any card based badge, but that actually requires me using money in the community market and crafting a badge, can kill two birds with one stone on that requirement. Even on my main account I have Game Mechanic 250+ games-451xp and that does not get me to level five alone, 6 years on steam grants a weak 300xp. Topping this off I feel is all of my level 2 accounts that simply have trading card tester-100xp and one stop shopper 1+ game-112xp so that account is impossible to convert without buying a bunch of games or completing the ambassador badge plus crafting another badge.
I feel this really excludes certain people in the community and people just joining because of the sale which can be a very enticing carrot when new/young gamers realize how much money they could save or be able to finally afford a title they have been craving. This coupled with killing tf2 -textmode item drops and their semi-threat blog post about idling for weapons has caused me to think I might want to change where I buy some of my games from because I feel the weather on steam is turning a little south.
Where did you find that information? I mean, that's what I'm assuming as well (at least, if I was in charge, that's what I'd do), but the FAQ doesn't actually say that explicitly.
The changes they just made to the market are interesting.
One may no longer buy commodity items from a specific other user. You may only 'place an order' for a card, and be anonymously matched with someone who is selling. Also, you are not allowed to pay more for an item than the current lowest price.
I'm guessing this will eliminate the occasional mysterious 300$ card sales, which I'm assuming was some kind of exploitation going on, though I can't imagine what it could have been. I'm sure it has a bunch of other effects on the dynamics of the market, but I'd need a more experienced steam trader to explain it, I think.
I wonder if this change will help keep prices for common items from bottoming out so fast. I don't see how it will, but it feels like a change needs to be made somewhere, since the current market listing system seems to encourage constantly decreasing prices for nearly all things.
I was always pretty sure those $300 for a single crappy item things were 15 year olds dealing drugs to their friends. It was an easy way to launder money.
The new trade system is only in use for the Summer cards as far as I can tell. Last year's winter sale ended in Valve deleting the globe cards on the marketplace at something like 100 per second minutes before the sale ended. The effect of that was that it seemed at first as if people were buying cards in droves last minute to complete badges. So scumbags like myself bought some at high prices with the intent at selling higher only to immediately find out they had blocked relisting that late in the sale even though you could still buy what was left. This time around they set it up so they can hit a single kill switch.
My understanding is that the new system is for all "commodity items" but while they are testing it out only the summer sale cards are "commodity items". Once they get the kinks worked out they'll be rolling it out to cards and more.
The angle I heard on this was to stop bots from buying and re-selling below-market items (arbitrage). You put in a buy order and they are filled in the order in which they were received. I suspect that the "stop prices from bottoming out" theory has some merit too - since Valve makes money on every transaction. They have an incentive to keep marketplace prices from crashing.
I don't know about like TF2 hats or whatever, but it's not just summer cards. All of the cards and emoticons I searched for used the new search results page with
on it.
'amature hour money laundering' was also my guess as to the nature of 300$ cards. I would suppose that's something that Steam doesn't really want to be a part of, even when they're getting a nice commision.
I cannot for the life of me find where I read this, but it was almost essentially this reason. They're trying to get ahead of it before it becomes a larger issue.