Originally posted by Uranium235:

I didn't mean to say he was the only one selling, just that you don't have that many options... for various reasons. Anyway we clearly disagree...
My point is, why should we discourage price discussions for everyone just to keep the "spam" away. If you price your stuff reasonably, you won't have a problem, I never had. If you create a trade where a lot of people feel the need to discuss, that should be your problem and not the mods. (unless that turns into spam or harassment)

My thoughts exactly. If I had 10-20 people commenting on my trades saying that my prices were overpriced I wouldn't consider that spam, just an error on my side in setting prices and I would appreciate people calling me out on it rather than having a trade up for several days/weeks without a single response and wondering why no one wants to buy anything.

We have a report system. That means that many of the main arguments against price discussion can be avoided simply by reporting spam and flaming. I do not see any benefits currently that is being listed of discouraging price discussions over encouraging it. The only one being, perhaps, more work for the moderators. I understand that they are doing this out of altruism, but I also know that there are plenty of people willing to help out a great site such as this one.

For those of you who are just joining the discussion, we are contemplating on whether to allow price discussions or not so try to stick to this topic.

This is the main argument and pros of each side:

(Encourage Price Discussions)
-Greater efficiency in market directly translates into:
--Increased Purchasing Power for buyers (more hats and items)
--Increased Profits for sellers
-Reduced amounts of 'sharking' and unreasonable trades
-Lower bandwith and server usage
--Cheaper hosting leads to additional services for members of Outpost and less downtime

(Discourage Price Discussions)
-Does not create 'drama'
-Can prevent flame wars (Why not just ban members who participate in unconstructive comments on price?)
-Higher amounts of 'sharking' which may be a better representation of real human nature
-Less work for moderators


I have listed the main arguments made in this thread, but please mention if I have missed anything and I will edit it into here.

Originally posted by Currier Bell:

I'm sorry, but I'm done if you're going to insist on using these real world analogies. This is not a real life simulation, it is a computer game.

Computer game or not, the theories of economics apply in every situation provided there is real interaction between buyers and sellers.

Originally posted by Currier Bell:

The economy is and always been inefficient and what you're doing is saying that since buyers aren't willing to pay the prices that will make trades happen that we should screw over sellers and pressure them into selling for less than they want. This will not happen, and any site that does attempt this will fail and not be used by anyone. Making trades happen faster for the sake of it does nothing constructive and will never happen.

This is not what I am saying at all. I understand that not everyone has an understanding of the economy, but I am definitely not asking to "screw over" sellers. By allowing competition to happen, the ENTIRE economy changes into one that is far more efficient. Neither buyers nor sellers are screwed over. Buyers receive greater purchasing power. Sellers receive greater profits. Newcomers engage in trades more frequently and join the market. The economy grows and more hats are in circulation. Amount of unreasonable trades drop significantly. In other words, everyone wins. The only logical group that I could think of that would oppose this are sharks and the richest of the rich, who are really the only people that may be affected by this change. Still, this forces even them to resort to more legitimate methods of making profit and provides them of a more characteristic perspective on reality.

Originally posted by norby89:

You are talking as if TF2Outpost was a market only for sellers, that they hold all the power and that they're driving the prices up because nobody can stop them. That's absolutely wrong and you're forgetting the fact that buyers can put up trades too hence influencing the price of an item. Is everyone selling an item for "x"? Well that seems to be overpriced and I'll put up a trade paying "x - 2" for it. I'm not the only one who thinks this way, so soon the sellers will have to give in and lower their price. No need to butt in on their trade and bash their pricing for that.

Any item that people sell, chances are you can buy cheaper if you create your own trade. That's what keeps things ballanced, buyers and sellers both have a say in it. Buyers will want to buy low and sellers will want to sell high, the real value of an item is somewhere in the middle.

That's essentially what I'm saying. Supply and Demand. Both buyers AND sellers influence the price, and the price is set at the equilibrium (basically the price that compromises for both buyers and sellers if you don't study market theory). However, the problem with people not "butting in and bashing their prices" is that one party will have to give in. You are assuming that the sellers behave like their real-life counterparts, who do market research and set their prices BASED ON the buyers' demand (value of item) and the prices of other sellers. However over 99% of the trades on Outpost are not like that and you can see this for yourself.

The point that I'm trying to make is that it is terribly inefficient for the market to have to wait for sellers to lower their price, assuming they do at all, and not the buyers having to raise their initial price. Any inefficiency in the market almost directly translates to increased prices in general and lower purchasing power for buyers, and well as stagnant growth in terms of new buyers/sellers entering the market.

In short: Supply and Demand only works if competition is encouraged. When competition is discouraged, the market becomes very inefficient and is wasting resources.

And some napkin math shows that a generic craft hat is around 27 weapons, which translates to about 27 hours playtime logged over the course of two weeks (due to item drop cap). This is assuming that you play solely for the sake of item drops, which is very unrealistic at best. Nonetheless, spending almost 2 hours every day for two weeks and only earning enough for one craft hat seems very inefficient to me. You're better off spending just one hour doing chores or working a job and earning enough to buy several keys worth of craft hats. The point that I'm trying to make is that despite its rather large playerbase, the market economy (of craft hats and weapons, at least - not going to delve into unusuals) is terribly terribly inefficient. This means that increased purchasing power for buyers and increased profits for sellers are essentially being "lost" to the system.

Like I've mentioned before, there is a reason that the world's largest economies all are (or are transitioning into) a competition-based market.

Very fair point. We both seem to agree that general prices will go down if price discussions were allowed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Only a very small percentage of TF2 players and those involved on Outpost are "rich" enough to trade unusuals and items worth more than a few keys. In fact, the vast majority of players only own a few craft hats.

When price discussion is allowed and encouraged, the purchasing power of the entire economy's participants will increase. This easily translates to increased utility and satisfaction for buyers as well as increased profits for sellers.

The whole point that price is manipulated with constant undercutting is that it stimulates competition. The fact that someone would say "that person sold cheaper, so should you" significantly brings prices down to more acceptable levels. Right now, only a small handful of members own Unusuals as I have mentioned. But many of these individuals own more than one and are drastically increasing in wealth and "power" over the Unusual market, which easily spills over to power over the entire economy.

So yes, the person who managed to buy a lot of Unusuals prior to the market's stabilization will end up very wealthy, especially if the change in price discussions is implemented. The person who stocked up on stashes of gold prior to a market crash or the person who purchased massive amounts of Apple shares before they rose in price also ends up very wealthy. My point? These individuals stumbled upon a rare opportunity, rather by knowledge or luck, but we should not disrupt the entire economy in order to bring their wealth down. Instead, we should be trying to redistribute the balance of 'power' and wealth across the economy with competition. We should be seeing this from the perspective of the average buyer and the average seller, not from the perspective of an individual in the top 1% of wealth distribution.


"The top 1% of unusual owners own 14% of the unusual hat [market]."

Originally posted by Currier Bell:

Sadly, this analogy doesn't work for the simple fact that the public cannot dictate what prices are. If this were the case, I'm sure new vehicles and the price of food would be much less than they are now.

Simply put, The TF2 economy is in no way a capitalist market, but a barter market. Each trade is different from the rest and the owners of said items get to decide what it is worth to them and at what point they are willing to part with it. While there are commonly viewed prices for items, these are in no way concrete and final, and it is nobodies right to tell the owner that they must lower the price on their item.

I did not mean that the public simply dictates the price, but rather plays a significant role in determining the price. I'm sure you have heard of Supply and Demand.

I definitely agree that the TF2 economy is most like a barter market. However this just further reinforces my point that the current system is extremely inefficient and a complete waste of resources on many levels, not to mention the high barriers of entry that prevent new buyers and sellers from ever wanting to step foot in Outpost again. The economy is essentially stagnant due to this. The inefficiency uses up valuable resources such as server space and seller time, as well as driving prices upwards for buyers.

By allowing and actually encouraging fellow members to comment on the prices if they disagree with them, the entire market structure will actually shift to a Free Market/Monopolistic Competition-based market where price is the determining factor. This significantly raises the purchasing power of almost every single Outpost user - buyer and seller alike - which allows for increased utility for buyers and increased profits for sellers. On top of that, Sneeza will no longer need to pay such ridiculous amounts to keep hosting up, and can spend the surplus revenue on improving the site and granting more services to its users. There is a reason that we don't use the barter market anymore.

Very fair points made. I disagree with the shop analogy however, think about it this way:

You've got two shops, one is selling a pair of shoes for €50, the other for €75. Buyers only want to buy shoes for €35 and below, since that is what the general public thinks is the actual value of the item. Now these two shops, since they do not do any market research nor care to, start branching out and soon the entire street is filled with hundreds of shops all selling at this amount, leaving the buyer unhappy and unable to purchase his goods at the price that he wanted to. This is extremely inefficient and a huge waste of space on the street, and in Outpost's case, a huge waste of bandwith and server usage (notice the constant server downtimes, lags, as well as a very hefty hosting bill for the admins).

Even though I do not agree with the monopolistic power of the Spreadsheet in TF2 markets, the spreadsheet did in fact help prevent loads of unnecessary trades from being posted and reduced the server usage, while also serving as an informative resource for general guidelines regarding an item.

Recently however many people do not follow the Spreadsheet anymore (likely due to its large amounts of glaring problems). Some choose to follow other 'spreadsheets' like Backpack.tf, while others create their own prices. Having sellers decide on their own prices based on the prices of other sellers is actually very good in a economic perspective for fostering competition, which most know drives prices down and creates greater purchasing power for the average buyer.

However, the problem is when these sellers are setting prices regardless of what other sellers set theirs at and without any market research, creating unfair prices for the buyer and also using up expensive hosting space with useless trades. The simplest way to deal with this problem is very much like the real-world counterpart: to create competition and that involves having members of Outpost actively criticize or praise prices set by a trader. Countless trades on Outpost currently include phrases along the lines of "Do not comment on the prices set. If you do, you will be reported." I know several people that were banned simply because they were trying to inform a buyer or seller of what the market price for that good is.

I will not discuss too much about the consequences of discouraging competition, but Outpost serves as one of the primary markets of TF2 trading and addressing this issue will create efficiency and drastically improve buying habits and the TF2-economy as a whole.

I do not expect to see any changes any time soon if at all, as in the case that Sneeza and other administrators in charge do decide to implement such changes, it will be solely done out of altruism and an incentive to improve the economy and reduce scam rates.