Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.

[Lestrades.com] Nao 尚

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Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« on June 15th, 2017, 12:32 PM »Last edited on June 16th, 2017, 11:17 PM
Important poll: obviously I was working on that dropdown because I'm looking into saving the setting. However I'm not sure which way to do it.
1/ Save the same setting across all Sort dropdowns (in all list pages + offer creation pages)? If yes, what about the Library? (a) Should I ignore the setting and always sort by playtime first? (a) Should I store library sorting separately from all the rest?
1/ Save the same setting across all list pages (with same question for library), and a different setting for offer creation pages?
3/ Save the setting separately for each list and offer creation pages? Could be confusing, but also more powerful.
4/ Something else (please tell)..?

I could even technically store 2 sorting preferences per user, with a checkbox to switch between the two... But good luck to me to come up with a usable UI for choosing those, ahah...

I really need some suggestions now. The feature is already written, I just need to figure out which solution to use, because once I settle on it, it's gonna be harder to change it...

/u/humpaaa

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Re: Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« Reply #1, on June 15th, 2017, 01:58 PM »
Library sorting is pretty irrelevant to me personally, i barely look at it.
The same for blacklist. In short: Once a game is in my blacklist or library, it's irrelevant considering trading.

The lists i use most are wishlist and tradables.
For wishlist, i always sort by ratio. for tradables i sort A --> Z.

To store these settings individually would be a god improvement.

I also think that it would be good to be able to sort the wishlist by "available tradable copies", ignoring the ammount of people who wish for it.
If i look for a game, i'm interested in how many copies are available, not how many people want it.

[Lestrades.com] Nao 尚

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Re: Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« Reply #2, on June 15th, 2017, 11:37 PM »
Quote from /u/humpaaa on June 15th, 2017, 01:58 PM
Library sorting is pretty irrelevant to me personally, i barely look at it.
The same for blacklist. In short: Once a game is in my blacklist or library, it's irrelevant considering trading.
Yeah, but people may wonder why they can't remember sorting on these pages. After all, I myself was surprised one day to notice I had disabled multi-item editing in blacklist pages... (Still can't remember why I did it.)
Quote from /u/humpaaa on June 15th, 2017, 01:58 PM
The lists i use most are wishlist and tradables.
For wishlist, i always sort by ratio. for tradables i sort A --> Z.

To store these settings individually would be a god improvement.

I also think that it would be good to be able to sort the wishlist by "available tradable copies", ignoring the ammount of people who wish for it.
If i look for a game, i'm interested in how many copies are available, not how many people want it.
You mean you don't bother with the ratio when you send your offer..? You should ;)

Okay, more opinions..? You can just post something like "1b" or "3", you know... :^^;:

/u/humpaaa

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Re: Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« Reply #3, on June 15th, 2017, 11:58 PM »
Quote from Lestrade 尚 on June 15th, 2017, 11:37 PM
You mean you don't bother with the ratio when you send your offer..? You should ;)
No, i don't care about ratio at all.
I traded for ages at platforms where there was no ratio indicator. You have a list of games, your trade partner has a list of games.
There a some games more valuable (Monthlies, High Tier HB), the rest is equal value. So when i got introduced to trading, ratio amongst traders wasn't even considered a factor.
Still got that mindset, and probably will never change :P

For me, the ideal trade is always: I got a game on your wishlist, you got a game on my wishlist, both activate the games right away, both traders are happy.
That's what trading should be about, not ratio / G2A-for-Profit-Resell-crap.

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Re: Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« Reply #4, on June 16th, 2017, 02:35 AM »
Quote from /u/humpaaa on June 15th, 2017, 11:58 PM
For me, the ideal trade is always: I got a game on your wishlist, you got a game on my wishlist, both activate the games right away, both traders are happy.
That's what trading should be about, not ratio / G2A-for-Profit-Resell-crap.
This.  lots of this.

I really don't look at ratios.  I look at myself have a bunch of admittedly mediocre trading fodder...and I look for someone who has a game I want...and I offer them a number of my items for one of theirs.

I have only ever traded for things I activate on the spot.

~David.

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Re: Of list sorting & the philosophy of ratios.
« Reply #5, on June 16th, 2017, 12:12 PM »
Offering multiple 'mediocre' items for one item you want *is* catering to item ratios, really.

Ratio isn't the absolute way of sorting through items, of course. Some valuable games have shitty ratios[1], because they were never bundled for cheap (= valuable), yet were acquired before by most people who wanted them in the trader community, meaning the wishlist count drops a lot. It gets even worse if it's rebundled (even in a high tier), because at this point those same traders will add more copies to their tradables. On the other hand, some super-cheap games can be great ratios because they were never bundled but only sold on Steam via Steam. And with the increase in value of Steam gifts these days, it's only going to get worse/better for those archivals of cheap games.

So, of course ratio isn't everything.
Now, when it comes to bundled games that were in bundles < $3 (I'd say), there IS a legitimacy to ratios. All of these games are cheap, but you STILL got to find a copy for yourself if you want it. When someone asks me for a 3 : 50 game, I'm not going to trade it for a 40 : 30 game because I know I can trade some of my 40 : 30 games for that one... I'll instead try to get another rare game I've been trying to get my hands on. Sometimes it's hard. Especially on Lestrade's where the user pool is marginally smaller than on Barter (or, worse, SteamTrades). But it's still something you shouldn't ignore if you don't want to miss out on a better future deal. I'm not too worried about having 300+ tradables because I know at some point I'll either redeem them, or just retrade them for a future game I really, really want.

And I think the majority of traders (including me) redeem their keys immediately. I never redeemed a gift immediately because I like keeping gifts in my inventory for my own pleasure (not to retrade them). Which by the way makes for an interesting fact (I'm not the only one): my Steam purchases have dropped a lot since gifts were retired, because gifts used to be the closest to a 'retail copy' of a game.[2]

I'm fine with receiving offers that are relatively balanced, even if not in my favor. They just need to be in the same 'area' when it comes to the ratio. Not green versus red. Or it can be, if the game is known to be worth more (or less) than its ratio indicates. It's all about being used to it.
Then again I got over 3k games in just 2 years of being on Steam, so yes I *am* a compulsive trader, I spend more time trading than playing. I'm more concerned about making a good (or at least a fair!) deal than getting the game I want.[3]

What were we talking about, already....? Oh yeah, list sorting...
 1. For instance in my tradables, One Piece 3, Shadowrun Hong Kong or Day of the Tentacle...
 2. I know someone was so desperate to get a Steam gift of Steins:Gate that he bought it off me for its 100% retail price + a CS:GO key. (I figured I'd just rebuy it when it's -50% on sale and make some profit here. That show lost me after its boring movie... I'm just praying the upcoming TV show will be more inspired, like the first one was.)
 3. Well, the game I want is Dragon Kingdom War and it has an annoying ratio because it was in an obscure bundle which didn't even get updated when it expired, so grmpf... The frigging bundle had 10 games for $1... And nobody wants to trade me the game for a fair value like a couple Happy hour games. Not great for motivation.