Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
I've decided to leave the Steam trading shenanigans as is
I have 28 coal. And some coupons. And that's it. Well, unless someone quotes me really nice prices (in coal) for games I want, or trades that were on the table before this. (There are two such trades.)
I made several trades. I temporarily had Lucidity, Freedom Force, Half-Life 2, Chantelise, another copy of Chantelise, and even the legendary (:P) Farming Simulator 2011.
I did make a few misjudgements earlier. They included:
* not accounting more quickly for the fact that coal would fall dramatically in value.
* not accounting for the fact that some games and coupons were much more common than others.
* not deciding earlier on my own valuation of games and coal. I knew early on that coupons would be useless to me. But I should have decided much earlier on what my aim was: coal accumulation, high-demand wanted games, low-demand wanted games, achievement games, or what. That would have much more usefully informed my trading strategy.
That said, I have 28 coal right now. Here are my options.
1. Trade them for games.
Such as ones on my wishlist. But with the devaluation of coal, there's no way I can get reasonable deals on them compared to what else I can do with the coal. At this point, it's possible that I can get one or two of those cheaper games. But then I realized, I don't actually want them all that much. I already feel like I already have a ton of games I want to play, and getting more of them is not particularly going to make me much happier. On the other hand, for a more expensive game, such as Mirror's Edge, I would have to pay much more coal than I have available.
Considering that big-time traders currently value coal at around a third of a dollar for trades on par (i.e. with the other party not particularly wanting or disliking the game), I only have less than $10 "worth" of coal, and falling. And furthermore, I kinda want to support Carpe Fulgur, so if I do get Chantelise I would not mind actually paying for it. (Besides, I'd rather buy it on a non-Steam service. (Such as GamersGate.)
As for games that I don't actually want...I could get those, either for promotional achievements or for trading away (if they're not achievement games), but those are priced exorbitantly anyway. (I noticed something was wrong already when the offers to trade me Chantelise and Farming Simulator 2011 stopped coming...) Trading for achievement games is just silly; I'd be trading a large amount of coal for 0.75 + 0.125*[somewhat lesser large amount] coal, which would be a net loss on par anyway.
2. Craft them for prizes.
However, the prizes are more than likely to be coupons, which are worthless to me, or games I'm not interested in. And considering that I'm pretty sure not all games are evenly distributed, I'm relatively certain that even if I do get a game, it's unlikely to be one I want.
My hypothesis is that there's a limited number of copies of non-Valve games and non-Valve coupons that get randomly distributed--like, there's only so many copies of, say, Recettear that resulted from this promotion as free gifts from Steam, and same for -50% coupons for Recettear--and that Valve is throwing in its own games and coupons for its own games after that.
Now there are some 4.7 million active users. There are 1488 games on Steam as of December 2011. Valve does not release Steam sales figures, but from what I can tell, free games are a dime a dozen around Steam trading--they are not rare at all. Assuming that every user got one game, that would mean that Valve just gave out some 3000 copies of Skyrim. Given how Skyrim has been selling like hotcakes even at a high price, and that Skyrim isn't published by Valve, I doubt they would do that. Instead, I am pretty sure that the more valuable or better-selling a game, the fewer copies are being distributed. And at the end, all you can get is coal or coupons.
It's noticeably telling that:
* Valve/Steam has NOT indicated how many units of each game are being randomly gifted.
* Valve/Steam has NOT indicated EVEN the chance of getting a game as opposed to a coupon.
3. Use them as entries to the contest.
There are 1151 prizes in total. There are also about 4.7 million users. Not all participate, but let's say that each user has, on average, about 12 achievements. The drop probability for coal, according to the official contest rules, is 0.75. That means that the average user has 9 coal, or there's a maximum of roughly 43 million pieces of coal out there. If every piece of coal has an equal chance of winning, the chance of getting any prize is 1151/43 000 000 = about 0.2%. However, this chance is signifciantly increased by the following:
* Some people have crafted coal into other things. A lot of people, especially those with relatively little coal, have crafted it into other items. This drastically reduced the total coal out there.
* Some people have been pooling coal for themselves. Assuming that Valve does not award the same Steam user more than once in the sweepstakes, but Valve is also obligated to award all 1151 prizes, this also reduces the number of applicants in the pool. If the average user has 9 coal, it takes 50 users to pool together 450 coal, so there are at most about 100 000 such people, and I'm pretty sure the actual number of people with the dedication and resources to do this is in the four digits at most.
I could keep on piling up assumptions and calculate an estimate, but I think my chances at worst of getting something are somewhere between 0.1% and 1%. Which is, frankly speaking, not much worse than getting a game randomly off of SteamGifts.com.
Now, the chance of getting the top five games on my wishlist are about 1/8 of winning at all (or about 13% to be more accurate), but frankly speaking, I think the utility gain (even accounting for probability) would be higher[/u] than if I traded my coal for cheaper games (especially indie games whose developers I am more inclined to help support financially).
----
So there you have it.
One interesting result of all this is that the two games that I got out of this mess are actually both meant as gifts. One has been gifted already. The other sits privately in my inventory, waiting to be gifted away. In fact, at one point I suddenly realized that I was actually having more fun gifting games to people than gaining them in trades.
(For what it's worth, yes, I didn't keep the Chantelise units that I got. I traded one away, and gifted the other. It's on my wishlist, but I tried the demo and decided that I'm not currently interested in it. Maybe later.)
And, most likely after the sweepstakes are over and the Steam Trading forum stops being insane, I'm dumping the coupons on other people. Let me know if you want to speak for them in advance. They are -50% Valve, -50% Valve, -10% Valve, -50% LIMBO, -50% Farming Simulator 2011.
Finally: If a game doesn't have achievements on Steam, don't get it on Steam unless it's crazily cheap. Check GamersGate, GoodOldGames, the indie bundles (Humble Bundle, Indie Bundle, Indie Gala, Indie Royale), and other vendors (including direct from the developer) for their prices. And if you don't give a crap about the free giveaways and sweepstakes, you shouldn't even worry about achievements.
I made several trades. I temporarily had Lucidity, Freedom Force, Half-Life 2, Chantelise, another copy of Chantelise, and even the legendary (:P) Farming Simulator 2011.
I did make a few misjudgements earlier. They included:
* not accounting more quickly for the fact that coal would fall dramatically in value.
* not accounting for the fact that some games and coupons were much more common than others.
* not deciding earlier on my own valuation of games and coal. I knew early on that coupons would be useless to me. But I should have decided much earlier on what my aim was: coal accumulation, high-demand wanted games, low-demand wanted games, achievement games, or what. That would have much more usefully informed my trading strategy.
That said, I have 28 coal right now. Here are my options.
1. Trade them for games.
Such as ones on my wishlist. But with the devaluation of coal, there's no way I can get reasonable deals on them compared to what else I can do with the coal. At this point, it's possible that I can get one or two of those cheaper games. But then I realized, I don't actually want them all that much. I already feel like I already have a ton of games I want to play, and getting more of them is not particularly going to make me much happier. On the other hand, for a more expensive game, such as Mirror's Edge, I would have to pay much more coal than I have available.
Considering that big-time traders currently value coal at around a third of a dollar for trades on par (i.e. with the other party not particularly wanting or disliking the game), I only have less than $10 "worth" of coal, and falling. And furthermore, I kinda want to support Carpe Fulgur, so if I do get Chantelise I would not mind actually paying for it. (Besides, I'd rather buy it on a non-Steam service. (Such as GamersGate.)
As for games that I don't actually want...I could get those, either for promotional achievements or for trading away (if they're not achievement games), but those are priced exorbitantly anyway. (I noticed something was wrong already when the offers to trade me Chantelise and Farming Simulator 2011 stopped coming...) Trading for achievement games is just silly; I'd be trading a large amount of coal for 0.75 + 0.125*[somewhat lesser large amount] coal, which would be a net loss on par anyway.
2. Craft them for prizes.
However, the prizes are more than likely to be coupons, which are worthless to me, or games I'm not interested in. And considering that I'm pretty sure not all games are evenly distributed, I'm relatively certain that even if I do get a game, it's unlikely to be one I want.
My hypothesis is that there's a limited number of copies of non-Valve games and non-Valve coupons that get randomly distributed--like, there's only so many copies of, say, Recettear that resulted from this promotion as free gifts from Steam, and same for -50% coupons for Recettear--and that Valve is throwing in its own games and coupons for its own games after that.
Now there are some 4.7 million active users. There are 1488 games on Steam as of December 2011. Valve does not release Steam sales figures, but from what I can tell, free games are a dime a dozen around Steam trading--they are not rare at all. Assuming that every user got one game, that would mean that Valve just gave out some 3000 copies of Skyrim. Given how Skyrim has been selling like hotcakes even at a high price, and that Skyrim isn't published by Valve, I doubt they would do that. Instead, I am pretty sure that the more valuable or better-selling a game, the fewer copies are being distributed. And at the end, all you can get is coal or coupons.
It's noticeably telling that:
* Valve/Steam has NOT indicated how many units of each game are being randomly gifted.
* Valve/Steam has NOT indicated EVEN the chance of getting a game as opposed to a coupon.
3. Use them as entries to the contest.
There are 1151 prizes in total. There are also about 4.7 million users. Not all participate, but let's say that each user has, on average, about 12 achievements. The drop probability for coal, according to the official contest rules, is 0.75. That means that the average user has 9 coal, or there's a maximum of roughly 43 million pieces of coal out there. If every piece of coal has an equal chance of winning, the chance of getting any prize is 1151/43 000 000 = about 0.2%. However, this chance is signifciantly increased by the following:
* Some people have crafted coal into other things. A lot of people, especially those with relatively little coal, have crafted it into other items. This drastically reduced the total coal out there.
* Some people have been pooling coal for themselves. Assuming that Valve does not award the same Steam user more than once in the sweepstakes, but Valve is also obligated to award all 1151 prizes, this also reduces the number of applicants in the pool. If the average user has 9 coal, it takes 50 users to pool together 450 coal, so there are at most about 100 000 such people, and I'm pretty sure the actual number of people with the dedication and resources to do this is in the four digits at most.
I could keep on piling up assumptions and calculate an estimate, but I think my chances at worst of getting something are somewhere between 0.1% and 1%. Which is, frankly speaking, not much worse than getting a game randomly off of SteamGifts.com.
Now, the chance of getting the top five games on my wishlist are about 1/8 of winning at all (or about 13% to be more accurate), but frankly speaking, I think the utility gain (even accounting for probability) would be higher[/u] than if I traded my coal for cheaper games (especially indie games whose developers I am more inclined to help support financially).
----
So there you have it.
One interesting result of all this is that the two games that I got out of this mess are actually both meant as gifts. One has been gifted already. The other sits privately in my inventory, waiting to be gifted away. In fact, at one point I suddenly realized that I was actually having more fun gifting games to people than gaining them in trades.
(For what it's worth, yes, I didn't keep the Chantelise units that I got. I traded one away, and gifted the other. It's on my wishlist, but I tried the demo and decided that I'm not currently interested in it. Maybe later.)
And, most likely after the sweepstakes are over and the Steam Trading forum stops being insane, I'm dumping the coupons on other people. Let me know if you want to speak for them in advance. They are -50% Valve, -50% Valve, -10% Valve, -50% LIMBO, -50% Farming Simulator 2011.
Finally: If a game doesn't have achievements on Steam, don't get it on Steam unless it's crazily cheap. Check GamersGate, GoodOldGames, the indie bundles (Humble Bundle, Indie Bundle, Indie Gala, Indie Royale), and other vendors (including direct from the developer) for their prices. And if you don't give a crap about the free giveaways and sweepstakes, you shouldn't even worry about achievements.
Comments
So yeah, don't craft anymore.
I was going to estimate 25% but I wasn't sure how to back up that number. Here's the evidence. I think peak Steam activity was over 4.9 million users. Not quite 1/4, but more like 2/7 or 28%, or somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3.
This membership number might be a little low since there may be some of us who have since left the group. In fact, the "join this group" achievement might be doable by joining and then immediately leaving, but I'm not sure.