f13.net

Just wanted to take a moment to say that these are a bit of bullshit. That's all.

If you don't want them, I'll take them.

Sell 'em to people who are willing to literally buy into the bullshit.
Of course, that means you'll start thinking of them as having actual value, and... :evil:

They're worth about a quarter each I think.

Which isn't bad considering you can get Hotline Miami for like 8 quarters.

I don't want steam to tell me I have mail if it's just a stupid damn card.

Send cards to Paelos if I'm not on your friends, add me.  :drill:

How do you get the cards?

Launch games.

I would say play, but apparently you don't have to actually be PLAYING to earn them.

There are a set number per the games that have cards (about half of the total number per game). The rest you have to purchase/trade for, or possibly get in boosters.

You get booster packs when you have exahusted the amount of drops per game, but those just show up in your inventory, randomly.

When you have a complete set, you "craft" a new card (badge) that goes towards an achievement. Also, you get some emoticons and banner images, etc. WOO?

It's just.. a thing. It's there to make people give steam more money, ultimately.

I may have to look into this.  I have a bad habit of buying games that look fun but never actually playing them.  My library is full of stuff I've never launched.

FTFY  :grin:


They are bullshit, but selling them does add up when you don't think about it. I was able to pick up some BL2 DLC because of selling cards. For not doing anything and getting free steam wallet it's fine, otherwise it's awful

It seems like the only way to complete sets efficiently is to spend money in the cash shop games. Buying games only gets you half the cards per set. If you don't have any generous friends with extras the only other ways to get cards from what I understand is from the random boosters which you may never get or spend cash in the games that support that mechanism like TF2.

Just think - we're finally being paid to play video games!  Living the dream!
  :why_so_serious:

Mmmm, that sweet sweet dream of paying money for the priviledge to earn less than 3rd world wages :why_so_serious:



The cheapest way is to buy them off the market if you're going to spend any money. Then there is trading your cards from one game that you don't want for cards of another game that you do. Lastly, there is the option of trading with other people that you don't know either on the Steam forums or 3rd party websites, but that requires socialising with people you don't really want to talk to at all.

And as for random boosters, this is from the FAQ

These.

Plus the games you have to play to get them? Not interested in most and the ones I do have I don't have any interest in replaying.  (separate complaint about not being able to sell digital goods here. Though I knew that going in, thus my $20 rule.)

The thing that really set me off was the "Spend $10 and get one during the sale."

No. Fuck you, Valve.

You don't have to play them. If you own them, just launch the games when you are not busy.

I'm not saying you should, just trying to clarify for the sake of information.

Time to revoke Merusk's grief title!

How the hell do you even see if any of your cards sold and how much money you have stored up?

Spending money has never been my thing.. which is what all this 'steam badge' crap is aimed at.

Just sayin'

Steam wallet. It's in your inventory or when you access the marketplace. You can an email if a card sells.

I can't find any link to my steam wallet in my inventory or anywhere on the site....

Under account details on the upper-right.  It's not a separate info tab or link.

I just lowballed everyone by a penny and made 2 bucks towards buying Walking Dead. In about a minute.

I'm ok with these cards.

And I should've waited, I've got $2 more in the wallet already and another 80 cents to sell.

I've sold my duplicates as well.

..and just checked again, all sold. $5 total. Thanks, Steam!

I guess what I was missing is when everyone was talking about Inventory page they meant the Community Market page.  That's the only page that displays my wallet balance.

*Edit* and sold all my cards netting me about $2.60, thus making Fez + JC2 cost less than $5.  Card bullshit works for me.

Once you've put your cards up for sale can you see them? Can you change the sell price on them after the fact?

Is there an easy way to tell which games in your library are cards-enabled? The only place I can find such designation is on the main store page.

The Badges menu selection under your name in the main menu bar ("STORE LIBRARY COMMUNITY <YOUR_NAME_HERE>").

go to community -> market

Soooo, will people keep buying these things? Any speculation on whether or not I should just dump them now in anticipation of a crash?

They could fade into obscurity in a week, or they could just get more and more ridiculous over time. Who the fuck knows really.


Ingmar has some TF2 hat that is worth hundreds of dollars or some shit for example.  :why_so_serious:

I've managed to make $3. So it paid for FTL. Win win as far as I'm concerned.

The Max's Severed Head is worth like ~$90 last I looked I think? I can't actually sell it on the marketplace, I would have to trade it for other stuff or sell it through a 3rd party site. I don't have one of the buggy ones with an extra 'uncraftable' or 'vintage' tag on it, those are the ones that are worth hundreds.

eh? From Sam and Max?

Yeah, apparently there aren't very many. It was from the preorder for Season 2 I think. They made the guns from the same package available in other ways, so those aren't valuable, but the hat is apparently desirable enough that I get 4-5 friend requests a week from random people trying to trade for it. I should probably set my inventory to private.

But then you can't rub your imaginary wealth in people's faces!

God, I literally do not give a shit about badges, experience, and levels on Steam. What a bloated, useless, overdesigned system.

Ingmar, sell the stupid goddamn hat.

Every time I play TF2 nowadays people ask if they can trade me for the Max hat.  It's the stuff dreams are made of.

Samwise, sell the stupid goddanm hat.

But I like being able to tell when the enemy spy is copying me the one time I play TF2 every year!

 :uhrr:

Man's got a point there.

Schild just wants to buy all the hats for himself!  :why_so_serious:

There's enough stupid hats in tf2 that you'll know it's you even without the Max's head

There's never enough stupid hats!  :awesome_for_real:

So, how do I know who has extra cards and wants to trade them...?

Step by step
1.Click on your badge section
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/05/01.jpg)

2.click on an individual badge
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/05/02.jpg)

3.now scroll down!
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/05/03.jpg)

4.now bug your friends
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/829607/daily/05/04.jpg)

I've just been selling the few dupes I got and using that money in my Steam Wallet to pick up cards I didn't have.

Kind of sad that I didn't even know the Steam Wallet existed before this.

Main reason I'm completing sets and creating badges is to get them out of my inventory and I have a perverse need to level my account for some reason I don't actually understand. Thankfully that urge is small enough I won't spend any of my own money on it.

Yeah, I'm actually surprised how interesting it is to me.  Part of it's the whole "gotta catch 'em all" thing and part of it's the idea that this shit is actually making (a little bit of) money.

That said, some of this is kind of ridiculous.  I mean, Kinetic Void gets cards?  Really?  It's basically an early access alpha of an engine tech demo, there's literally nothing to do in it aside from lego a non-functioning ship together.  If there's a way to turn or move I haven't found it.  I built a ship that looked kind of like Serenity covered it with turrets, and fired bullets in to space for a minute or two, and I think I've explored just about everything there is to do in the game.  Total play time required to get all the cards: one and a half hours.  WHY DO THIS.

So to actually earn the cards for the games you already own, you just have to launch them? Can you just leave them running in the background for a bit until all the cards appear?

That's exactly all you do.

All the card drops you have for that game, yeah.  You won't get the entire set, though, you don't get enough drops for that.

Because someone at Valve figured out how to monetize the OCD nature of their audience and they can do it without building a whole new game.

Plus adding 'steam cards' gets some of those OCD folks to buy games they wouldn't otherwise, so smaller devs are going to be keen to add them when publishing.

Maybe it's a social/economic experiment on how to create a market (artificially) for something that seems totally worthless. You might get some interesting data on how it changes people's playing behaviour too (to get the cards from each of the games they already own and how they play the games they buy now ).  :why_so_serious:

Yes, as a reminder (mentioned on page 1), you do not have to play the game. It just has to be launched.

You need to do more than just launch them. E.g. I still don't have my Civ V cards even though I've been playing BNW.

This. I launched a few games just to get the cards and got no cards. I played about 2 hours of TF2 and got 2 cards. I played about 30 minutes of Saints Row 3 and got 1 card. I lauched Bastion but didn't play, got no cards.

I want more cards, simply so I can sell them to put money in my Steam Wallet - it's coupons for the Summer Sale.

Well, let's put it this way. I've gotten all of my cards aside from TF2 (which I've been playing) and never played the games.

I VPN into the home computer, launch a game, let it idle, and I get cards.

You do not actively have to play the games. Does playing the games increase the chances of a card drop? Maybe, I don't know.

The drop time for cards is random but you don't need to do more than just launch a game. Some even launch multiple games at the same time in text mode so it's not resource taxing on your system while you're off doing other shit.

Random is random.

Market is tanking, cards are down to less than 20¢ each as of yesterday. Still, probably get another buck or so, but it was nice for a while there. Wonder if they'll be collectible for completionists down the line.

Oh cmon, the price obviously crashed cause the game are so dirt cheap that people decided to just buy the game outright and earn the cards themselves. Dupes are expected but since Valve never really created a way to facilitate card trade except with friends, you're stuck with buying from strangers.

Or the fact that they're flooding the market and people are realizing it's worth selling them. Or both.

They don't get their vig from a straight trade. They get 10% cash for every sale.

It's an interesting system because the people who sell their cards are getting the buyers to pay (partly) for their games. The money goes into the seller's Steam wallet, and eventually towards a purchase. Valve created the "value" that some people are willing to pay for, to acquire the other half of the cards needed to permanently convert them into badges, and collects 10% off the top of the transactions. The other 90% of the money goes to the seller, who then spends the buyer's money on their own games.

Valve, having spent I assume a decent amount of time and resources to set this up (and to continually add new game cards in future), did not attempt to sell the cards directly, which would have gone down badly. Instead it appears as if they are giving out something new for free. Yet what they are doing with the 10% skim is not that far off, and more effective.

Straight-up trades don't involve money, so Valve can't recoup their investment / gain profit there, but they still build loyalty for anyone who engages and gets invested in this. Sure I could buy the same game at the same price from the competition, but I get free cards to trade and badge if I go with Steam instead. Especially if it becomes a thing in my group of gamer friends.

I got them all at once after my first session of BNW.

Wait.  Hats?  I LOVE hats.  Where are the hats?

Not only that but I'm assuming that when you craft a badge you can't sell the cards again (that would be stupid if you can) which means that if people do like the card system in the long run summer sale cards could potentially go up in price once the sale is over, since supply is limited and people have been already taking them out of circulation.

I'd be more into this if cards were tied to *some* gameplay and you weren't limited in how many you could earn. I was enjoying the system when it was encouraging me to revisit arcadey games I hadn't played in a while (Binding of Isaac, Dungeons of Dredmore, Hotline Miami) but the entire thing shattered once it started asking me to play regular games. I was either doing boring shit in games I've already beaten just to kill time without idling the game (collectibles in Tomb Raider/Bioshock, etc.) or I was playing linear story-based games that I'd been meaning to check out, but feeling like I should bail on them after 2 hours because I maxed out the cards I could receive from it.

I've been playing BL2 again since some friends picked up the season pass, and we maxed out on cards within the first night. Since then I've probably played another 6 hours with them, and it's a shame that I'd have better luck letting different games idle than actually playing one that was part of the promotion.

Agreed with most of your points Rokal. They should have tied the cards to achievements or something, instead of just "launch game, wait, receive cards".

In Team Fortress 2.

IMO, they could maybe tie your overall Steam Level to achievements somehow (like gamerscore or something) but trading cards look like they serve a slightly different purpose.

For one thing, they appear to be super easy to implement.  Even ancient games that the original programmers haven't touched in decades, like System Shock 2, can support them really easily, apparently.  Even though putting in achievements evidently would have been too much work for them.

For another, it's good for the whole "Steam Backlog" problem where people have mountains of games they never play.  It's a system that encourages players to dip a toe in to more of the games they buy.  Previous sales did this, too, by tying achievements to the sale itself, but the trading card thing works even without the sale.  Since you can't max your cards out (even for a level 1 badge) on your favorite game, anyone who wants to show their e-peen for that game needs to either pay real money or trade cards from games they care less about... but to get those cards, they have to play those other games.  It's a way to be "advancing" in game X while playing game Y.

The whole system is designed around the idea of getting players to trade cards.  If you could just play Borderlands 2 for 100 hours to get everything, that's what everyone would do, and you wouldn't have to trade, and Valve wouldn't get their cut.

Thanks for the reply RK. I know about how to see what friends have cards, but I hoped there was a smarter to do it. I hate bugging others and being a nuisance by randomly spamming people asking for stuff. Especially as a big chunk of my steam list are F13 members I hardly know.

"Hi Lantyssa. We haven't talked in months, but now that I need something from you....How is it going? Good? Here too. So now, about those cards you have...."

To get the ball rolling, I currently have the following Summer Sale cards in duplicate and am willing to part with them for other cards, or in lieu of that, a 'Oh thanks, Cala. You're the best!':

(http://i.imgur.com/SwkK0R4.png)

I'll trade you a Dead Island Riptide for a Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

I've got Dead Island Riptide and Skyrim extra.  All I need is Football Manager.

Also two extra Azuras in the Skyrim set (need anything but Mehrunes Dagon), and an extra Keith Preston in Tropico 4 (don't need Penultimo or General Rod).

I need a skyrim, will trade you in 8 hours if you're online then Lantyssa for a Football manager if you haven't traded by then!

I have like 4 extra Summer Skyrim cards because RNG  :oh_i_see:

I must be doing it wrong, I launched both Mount & Blade: Warband and System Shock 2 (both of which apparently have cards) and got nada :-(

I think you have to let them run for 10-15 minutes or so before you get the cards. And by run, I mean sit at the main screen menu.

30 minutes, I believe.  I tend to let my games idle overnight or when I'm at work.

Random drops are random. It could give you a card in 5 minutes, it could not give you one for 2 hours. Just let the games run like Lant is saying

I've been running a lot of games at the menu screen to get the cards while I do other stuff on the computer and every single time I've gotten cards at the half hour mark; if I start a game up at 9:14, I'll get a card around 9:28-9:32ish, and every half hour after that until I run out of drops. Never had it take more than 30 minutes to get a card in the ten or so games I've done this for.

I'll watch for that a bit more, as I'm not noticing that to be the case. Ex: I played TL2 for over 30mins and do not have a single card for that game.

I've personally gotten a couple cards within 10 minutes of launching a game. There may be something with individual games or maybe the amount needed, but I haven't noticed a 30 minute thing. I've also gotten all the drops within an hour at times, but also had games not get them in several hours. RNG is apparently very random.

Its just weird, then. I did it with another two games today (Shogun 2, Sleeping Dogs), specifically looking for when I got the cards and of the eight card drops they all hit within the 27-34 minute interval window from what I started the game and from last card drop.

Maybe my randoms just love being randomly consistent. Or something.

I've had similar to Sickrubik, but the TL2 was in the last couple of days.

For today, I launched Magicka, TL2, and Saints Row 3 at the same time at 5:38, at 5:54 I received a card for all 3 games, so 16 minutes. What is odd is that all 3 came at the same time. Waiting to see if that happens with the 2nd card for these games.

edit/update: 6:54, so 1 hour after receiving the first cards I still do not have the 2nd cards. Random is random.

It is very likely that you're getting them at different times, but the Valve servers are backed up and they're just all arriving at once when it gets around to barfing them out all at once to your account.

I've noticed that the cards that I'm getting for buying things are coming a lot later than the purchase.
This has only been the case in the last couple of days.
Before that, since the start of the sale, they would arrive as soon as the purchase completed.

Interesting thing is that when crafting a badge, the rewards arrived as soon as I pressed the crafting button.

As for my game play, they arrive around the half hour mark for me as well.

Trading:
Does anyone have sale foils they are willing to trade?

My extras:
Borderlands 2 - Axton, Jack, Salvador
Defiance - Jon Cooper
Don't Starve - Wendy, 2x Willow, Wilson
Endless Space - United Empire
FTL - Mantis Cruiser
Halflife 2 - 2x Respite
Left 4 Dead 2 - Spitter
Magicka - Fire Element
Portal 2 - 2x Finale
 Summer Sale - 3x Dead Island, 2x Reus
Super Meat Boy - Dr. Fetus!
Team Fortress 2 - 2x Sniper, 3x Spy

Edit: added my spare cards.

I let 3 games (Portal 2, Hotline Miami and Torchlight 2) run for ~4 hours and only earned one card for each game.

A couple of questions for the people who are having a far more random time of things.

Are you running more than 1 game at a once?

Does Steam recognize that you're in the game for the entire time?

Not saying anything conclusively but it makes sense that if steam doesn't think you're in the game (because you've gone offline or the game has a launcher that closes once the game start, etc) then it may not track as well.
I've also only seen Steam say that I'm in 1 game at any given time, no matter how many I have running, which could confuse it.

I figure there is some sort of checking going on where Steam is pinging accounts and distributing cards to players, but I don't think there was some delay due to them being backed up. I received a summer card from the store within seconds and I had an idle tf2 account running at the time on my media comp which was receiving items (as I am thinking that may be the other drop system which would be used). That, and this has been going on longer than just during the sale when the servers were not under nearly as much stress.


I'm still receiving them within sceonds for store purchases.


Last night was the first time I had been running multiple games at one time, but not the first time I noticed that it wasn't distributing cards at a set pace.

Anyone's online status will only display that you're playing 1 game at a time, but your activity log will track for all of the games (which it did), and last night I had received cards for all 3 at the same time meaning they definitely recognize all the games are running.

Although there are two more possibilities that I've read of.
1) it's possible that running multiple games at once may slow down the drop rate. This supposedly is a comment from Valve but I have not seen it, and if it slowed down card distribution then my receiving a card for all 3 games at one time within 16 minutes makes this tough to buy into but it could be true.
2) Different games drop at different rates. This just goes along with drops are random imo, and does not prove anything without massive data collected for people running individual games and timing how long it takes to receive a card.

That seems pretty plausible to me.  Some games have way more drops than others, for example Organ Trail has eight, and I've got them all, but I only have three hours total play time on the game (and that's including time played before the sale and after getting all the cards) so at a minimum it can't be a half hour straight across the board for every game.  Maybe the drops are calculated with respect to the amount of cards currently in existence, the way boosters are, or something.

With regards to trading, it looks like the summer event cards will stop dropping after the sale ends on Monday, but you can still trade them, so I suspect prices are going to rise a bit after that.

My inventory page is here (http://steamcommunity.com/id/weyen/inventory/#753_6), if anyone sees anything they want, let me know.  Currently I've got duplicates of Reus, Tomb Raider, Dead Island, and Bioshock Infinite, and I'm missing Skyrim and Torchlight 2.

Today I played Portal 2, Witcher 2, FTL, Terraria, Borderlands 2, System Shock, Dead Island, Orcs must Die 2, Mount and Blade:Warband and Crusader Kings 2 simultaneously. It's quite fun, altough sometimes it can get a bit confusing. Oh, and I can confirm cards drop for multiple games, as Segoris said.

Edit: I almost forgot Don't Starve and Shogun 2. Gameplay musn't have had a memorable impression on me.

Is there any reason whatsoever to get cards / make badges / gain experience. I'm like level 11 or 13 or some shit but I simply don't see a purpose.

Also I'm not selling my summer cards til it spikes from people who totally ignored the sale.

Aside from e-peen, not much.  There's allegedly profile related stuff like different options for your profile page and extra friends list slots, but I have no idea what that means.  Maybe I just don't have enough friends to fill up all my slots or something, but I've never even been aware that there was a limitation on it.

Higher level also means more card drops (and more foils) which means more money if you're selling them, but it's not like it's going to finance your ninth camaro or anything.

Besides profile related stuff, you gain a higher % chance to earn random booster packs when they go out. So basically, more cards....

I have two extra Dead Island and just need Football Manager.

Alright, fuckit, I'll join this goofy game.

I have the following Extra:
Kerbal Space Program
Skyrim
2x Tomb Raider

I need:
Dead Island
Football Manager
Torchlight II

My one card is Torchlight II which you can have because I don't buy enough to make them useful.  I'll send it to you as soon as I figure out how to send cards or even where they live.  I also don't know if I'm your Steam friend or even if I have to be.  Everything is so complicated!!

I need:
Chivalry
Reus
Kerbal Space Program
Torchlight II

Extras:
Skyrim x2
Tomb Raider

I THINK the way this works (haven't tested it) is that you have to:

• Go to his profile (if you're not a friend, you can find it in the F13 group, or here (http://steamcommunity.com/id/schild) if you want to do it in your web browser, but you have to log in first)
• Right underneath where it says his level, you should be able to click "send a message"
• In the chat window with him there should be a little down triangle at the top right corner
• There should be an option there to "invite to trade"

It doesn't say send him a message so I sent him a friend thing.  He might reject me though because he's a contrary boy.

Need: Chivalry

Extras:  Torchlight II, Skyrim, Bioshock: Infinite, Prison: Architect

I also have a double of Gaige for Borderlands 2.

I guess I just need Football Manager and Torchlight II now.

Well, I'm TRYING to give you Torchlight II, I just can't figure out how!

You're not online, we can deal with it tomorrow. I'll message you on there.

I think I have two or three steam cards.  One is Terraria.  I'll trade them for GT5 museum cards.

I'm done with the summer badge, so any of my remaining summer cards are up for grabs, free to a good home.  Sitting on Chivalry, Kerbal Space Program, and Reus at the moment.

I've also got an extra :postcardb: emoticon if anyone wants it.

I'll take any of those extra summer cards.  Any cards from anybody actually.  It's stupid, but I can't stop crafting badges.   :awesome_for_real:

Dibs on Chivalry!  :awesome_for_real:

Ooooh, meeeee for Gaige, please!  Of course Chivalry is one of the few Summer Sale duplicates I don't have.

EVE:  Machariel

Summer: Dead Island (2), Bioshock Infinite, Football Manager 2013 (irony), Prison Architect, Reus, and Skyrim

Skyrim:  Azura (2)

Tropico IV:  Keith Preston

Ok, so I got my 5 ranks of sale badge and the foil and need to figure out what to go for next.

In the mean time, is there an etiquette for these sorts of threads, where the details of your post change frequently?
I mean, should I just post every now and then when my list has changed or been buried?
Or is it better to just keep editing the old post and hope people see it?

This is f13.  Everyone will stop playing the game in a week, and the subforum will get dumped into the gaming graveyard in like 6 months   :awesome_for_real:

I've played enough MMOs with you lot to know this to be true.
Still, quit killing the dream :-P

I still don't know why I would want cards, long term. Like, aren't they just only worth something if you sell them?

They're worth more than the emoticons and textures you can unlock by bundling.

YOU GET EMOTICONS FOR MAKING BADGES? OH MAN. SIGN ME UP.

Seriously though, you can make badges to be more annoying in chat? Also, textures for what?

Steam profile backgrounds, apparently.  There's a tick under the "Community Supporter" badge for applying a background to your profile, which it says come from cards.

Dumb.

And yet, I have a feeling you'd pay more for backgrounds to cards in HEX.

Negative, dancing monkey.

I still haven't figured out how to send you that ONE damn card I have!  Everything the FAQ told me to do didn't do anything!

Some of he profile backgrounds are cool.  I really like my borderlands Zero background!

Speaking of which, I have a dupe shogun total war card.  Anybody have any cards or dupes they want to trade for it?

You can't send them, you have to trade with them while they're online. You do it through the friends/chat system.

Yeah, poke me if you're having trouble and I can walk you through it, I think.  The tricky bit is that he has to be online at the same time as you and in a conversation with you to do it.

Also, Rasix, who are you on Steam?

I'm online 24/7/365.

Edit: Well, my account is.

Someone would have to be there to check the 'yes I agree to this trade' box on both sides.

Rasix
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Rasix

Hmm, not working for me, is it set to private or something?  The link just takes me to my own friends list feed.

I could pass it to someone else you already have friended, and then have them pass it to you, maybe?  Hmm...  I wish there was just, like, a bin we could dump these in to and let whoever wants one take one.  This trading stuff is a pain.


EDIT:


Oops, heh, my bad.  That did it, thanks!

Take the /home/ off the end.

Yes, I noticed but you're not really there.  The card thing is dumb anyway.  (sorry to the people who are into the card thing - I didn't mean it)

Yes, I did.

I've been active on steam for the last 7 hours. ಠ_ಠ

oops.  Sorry.  I was looking at shoes.

That's a lot of shoes.

Or a couple really interesting shoes.

Or she was staring at her feet.

At this point I think Signe is just f-ing with schild and doesn't even have a card.   :drillf:

I'd like to believe this is true.  :grin:

No.  Steam is fucking with me.  Fuck Steam and it's stupid Steam Guard.  I don't know what that is but fuck it all the way to hell.  Dammit.

You have been improperly named, amiable!

Has anybody gotten any booster packs?  I got one for Skyrim last week, haven't seen anything before or since.  Seems pretty rare...

First one I got was yesterday for Civ 5. I haven't been able to find any concrete information on their frequency other than 'random'. Your Steam level increases the drop chance supposedly.

I got a Saints Row one last week.

Steam level?  This is HL2:EP3, isn't it?

In that it's what the hipster devs at the commune have been dicking around with instead of working on it, yeah.

Wouldn't it be better to just work on HL3 instead of HL2: Gordon Freemen Forever? I don't know, I think Half Life sucks.

It would be better to sweep it into the trash bin.  Relevance is gone and if anyone at Valve is actually working on it, they obviously suck at making games.

I think I've gotten 3 boosters so far.  Level 50 supposedly doubles your chances to get them, but the don't actually say what the starting chance is, so I'm doing what any sane person should be doing and just selling all the cards I've gotten.  I'm up like 6 free games so far off of it, so I think I'm winning, and my current pile of money from the last two day's new cards will probably pay for a good chunk of Shadowrun if I break down and buy it.

Far as I can tell, it seems more profitable to sell the packs than the individual cards.  Unless you actually get a foil when opening the pack.
The random rumors I read say they scraped episode 3 and just rolled it all into working on HL3.  Guess we'll see.  I hope they're working on something though, I really love HL and want to see the rest of the story.  :(

SPOILER: Gordon Freeman kills tons of aliens while walking down a hallway, then Alyx either gets kidnapped or killed saving him from something, and then Gordon fights the boss alien, who is huge and can only be hurt in a very specific way.  There's a big setpiece fight, culminating in a huge explosion, and then the G-Man walks in and delivers some vague dialogue that sets up another sequel so nothing gets resolved.

WRT to booster packs, I agree that selling them seems to make more sense than opening them, in all the games I've checked.  The only caveat would be foils, but those seem too rare to be worth it.  I've got two booster packs and something like a hundred and thirty cards and only seen one foil so far.  I assume the rate at which they appear goes up with level, but without numbers, it's hard to be sure where the break even point is if it even exists.

Decided to throw my extra cards on the Steam market for .01 under whatever the cheapest was.  Granted they were mostly like .10 - .20, but I was shocked when all 20 or so sold in less than 5 minutes.  :ye_gods:  I guess people do care about cards.

Boosters for a game are randomly given out when ever someone on Steam makes a badge for that game.
Base chance hasn't been revealed from what I've seen.
Every 10 levels of your account increases your chance to get a booster by 20%.

1% chance that your card will be a foil when ever you get a card.

HA!  I found Steamguard!  Maybe now I can give Schild that card he probably doesn't need anymore.   :grin:

I made some time today to look at Steam.  Seems I'm level 7, which was impressive until I saw some of you guys.

Looks like I have a duplicate of one card: Terraria: Living Wood.

Cards Available: Living Wood, Alyx Vance

Just Cause one, two and a bunch of dlc is only six bucks for the next 24 hours.

Are there cards?

Just in case anyone here is still interested, here is a list of the things I have for trade.

So, the new Winter Sale thing has renewed my interest in Steam Cards. Looking for the following:

Skyrim
Daedric Warrior
Talos
Draugr Deathlord

Borderlands 2
Zer0
Maya
Salvador
Gaige

Summer Getaway
Reus
Kerbal Space Program
Torchlight 2

I have for trade:
Hotline Miami - Burn
Torchlight 2 - Berserker
Portal 2 - Finale
Skyrim - Nordic Ruins
Skyrim - Mehrunes Dagon
Skyrim - Troll
Summer Sale - Skyrim (2)
Summer Sale - Tomb Raider

My inventory is getting kind of big, too, and my account is locked from selling anything until new years, so if someone wants to trade (or take some of these coupons off my hands) feel free to drop me a line.  I think they added remote trading, so you don't have to message someone to trade with them, you just send them the trade request by clicking on a link.

For me, I think trade requests go to this link, (http://steamcommunity.com/tradeoffer/new/?partner=32993356&token=wLsRPz_9)
and my pile of junk is viewable here. (http://steamcommunity.com/id/weyen/inventory/#753)

Rendakor, I have a spare Azura I can pull off the market, but don't need any of those cards.  I can take the Portal 2 one though, since a duplicate of one game is as good to me as another.

It looks like you have a spare Handsome Jack.  I could take that one, too, and start working on level 2 of that badge.

If anyone is doing the snow globes for the Christmas sale, I have and extra copy of #7 and #8 that I would be willing to trade one for one for either #1, #5, #9 or #10.  Or can you even trade them?

Ginaz, I've got a #1 or #9 i can trade for a #7.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/xwaste

Remdakor, I have some of the cards you want too as well if you want to trade.

I'm not sure how to trade but I've added you onto my friends list.  Here's my Steam ID.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970513638/

Alright, I added you. Send me a trade request with what you've got and what you need.

I still don't get the whole point of these cards.

Froth.  And to get you to spend money buying them on the market.  Even if Valve only gets a .02 a transaction there's enough happening that they're making money.  I don't have many but I put my duplicates on the market and sold most in a day .15 each.  (The .20 ones are still there.)  There's tens of thousands of them on the market and valve charges a few cents on each trans.

I usually sell all of my cards, too.  However, the snow globe ones give you vanity items in a few games.  Its the only reason I'm not selling those.

I like collecting things.  Would you rather have $0.15 or a happy Yegolev? :grin:

Does anyone want a La Mulana Fairy Family?  It's my only remaining duplicate.

EDIT: I reckon you could theoretically have both the pennies and a happy me.  You know where I am.

Trade completed.  Thanks.  Still looking for #5, 9 and 10 snow globe.

Whenever i get a card i toss it in the market at the cheapest price it just sold, is there anything more productive to do with them?

I've got an extra #5 if you have a 2, 3 or 6.

Well now that I've seen what they plan to do with them I guess I can hang on to them in case a really cool cosmetic comes out down the line that you craft from badges. But that's all I did with them as well.

I just got an extra #2 a few minutes ago from voting for the next special.  What's your Steam ID?

Rendakor, same as here.

I have an extra #4, need 1,6,10
Steam ID - http://steamcommunity.com/id/jwiv/

I've got to extra 3's if anybody wants to trade for them.

I could use a 3; have an extra 4 or 5.

I could use a 4.  To steam!

I have an extra 7, I need...2,3,4,5,9 and 10...so, if anyone needs a 7. :)

I have 2 extra 3's so I can trade you for a 7.

Sent you the trade request Teleku.

Still looking for 2, 6, and 10. I have extras of 4, 5, and 7.

Edit: Finally got a few cards I needed after buying things. Just need 10 now.

Ok, I need #9
Have #4, #5, #6 and 2x #10 spare.

Also finally thought to make my google doc publicly viewable.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ErZD9tqmF6h0QO_JmAEpZKd6TWk8-eovp-taKo2F_ew/edit?usp=sharing
List for right now is behind the tag for anyone that doesn't like google docs.

I have gotten yet another 3.   :oh_i_see:

Only need a 6 and a 10 now.

I need 5 and 6, got 1 and 7.

x

I need a 3, 4, 5.  I have extra 2, 6 and 7.

Just need 4 and 5 now.  I have extra 3, 6 and 7s.

I need 4, have extras of 5, 6, and 9.

?

He probably needed some cards but got them so he deleted the request.

I r dumb.

Yup.  I ended up dumping a pile of random steam items on the market then turning the proceeds around to fill in the gaps, combined with cards obtained via finishing a bunch of collections and so on.   Most cards seem to be going for 10-20 cents so selling some to buy others ended up being less hassle than figuring out trades.   If the trade UI allowed people to indicate what they want and what they're willing to trade I think it'd be massively more useful than it is.

I have two #8.

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pVe7Gb0YkRg/UIuD1Osn1RI/AAAAAAAAJ74/9-awR7-w-l0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-20+at+4.02.jpg)

FIFM

Badge crafted.
Now I'm out of spare event cards.

How do you craft foil badges?

Collect foil cards?

With foil cards. The foil snow globe cards are going from ~$2 on the marketplace so you'd be looking at around $20 to craft a foil badge for the Winter sale (which gets you 5 of the crafted items).

Edit: You could craft a regular badge for around $2 so if ones' goal was to gamble for items that would be the more cost effective way to do it.

o i c

Was just wondering, I still don't care about this card stuff. It seems half-assed.

Wait, there are foil cards?  What?

Yeah, I'm pretty puzzled by the whole Steam Cards and Badges thing!

There are, but they're super rare or I'm unlucky.  I'd say rare since you don't know about them and I've only gotten one.

I've got a spare #10 now, if anyone has 4, 5 or 9.

Last time I checked, any time a card is generated there is a 1% chance it is a foil.

I just got my first foil from this day's vote. I didn't know the foil badge gave you more items; might have to try and craft it now.

Also I've got an extra #10, could use 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, or 9 towards my second badge.

LET'S CRAFT A BADGE:

I need: 4

I have extra: 1

I don't play any games the items are for, but whatever! Badge ahoy!

I have cards for you if you stop playing that game.

Updated my post! Need #4, Have an extra #1 (and an extra #10)!

I don't get cards.

By that I don't mean I don't understand them. I mean I do not recieve them at all.

This is a very sad story I know.

I now have two 1s and two 10s and need...4,5 and 9.

Need a 4 or 5.  I currently have extra 3, 6, 7 and 9

Ok, finally have something to trade again.

Need: 3

Have: 6, 7, 3x10

I need 2 and 3; have an extra 7.

Have an extra 7 and 10, need just about anything else.  Yes, I'm an asshole and going for a second level to the badge.   :awesome_for_real:

Still need #4. Now have an extra: 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10.

I see Teleku needs #10, but he's a filthy badger horder.

I still need 4, 5 and 9. I have spare 10s and 1s.

I've got an extra 4, but I need a 2.

I've got a spare 8,10 and 1 -- still need 4, 5 and 9.

Actually, I have an extra 10 and 7 to trade away!

Also I want another attempt at getting a rare item.  I just got the common item for Spiral Knights, of all things.   :cry:

Second badge made.

Need 4

Trading 2x3, 6, 9, 10

I have an extra 5. Need 1, 3, 9 and 10.

I've got an extra 1 and need a 5. Offer the trade and I'll approve it.

Was just chatting to Teleku about trades.

Update of my trades is behind the spoiler

Made badge.

Got Precious Stonghold Kingdoms Item.

Worth $1.40.

Same item level for TF2, worth $140.

This shit is stupid.

Is there a cap on the number of cards you can earn from making purchases? My progress bar towards next card isn't filling up when I add things to my cart anymore; there isn't anything I want up at the moment to buy and test it, so I can't tell if it's just the bar is glitchy or if I'm just not going to earn more cards anymore.

Heh, that's some hilarious bad good luck.   :why_so_serious:

But be happy.  I've crafted three badges so far, and got common items each time!

You still get cards for purchases -- the bar is buggy. Mine bugged out after like the 2nd day. On the checkout screen it doesn't show any progress for the purchases in the cart but it will advance after you pay and you will get cards. I was worried cause Valve's store was having so many issues early on so I took screen caps of my progress and purchases in case I had to dispute things.

Made two cards, got the "Extraordinary" item for PoE and the bottom promptly fell out of that market.  Was $10-$20 is now $2.50.  Said fuck it and kept it on my acct.

I guess I need 4, 5, 6, and 7, to try my hand at another badge. I have extra 3, 8, and 9.

Probably because the imp mask looks awful.

So exactly like the rest of the art, including the animations, in PoE. Makes sense.

I don't know why I care out of no where, but I'd like to finish the badge up. I have an extra 5 and I need a 3.

I finished a badge. Just got some common stuff. Oh well. :)

If anyone has them, I still need 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Fuck if I can figure out how to send it to you.  Schild, send me a trade request for #6 and it's yours.

Edit:  I just initiated a trade for one of your cards, pulled it, and it let me gift it to you.  Enjoy.

4 badges.  4 commons.  I'm a sad little man.

Still need 4, 5, and 7 :\

Correction, now I only need 5 and 7.

Steam seems to be melting. Inc angry nerds who couldn't finish their badges last minute.

Yep I got knocked off several times.

Not melting for me, still need 5 and 7 (I can't connect to the friends server, lolllll)

Kildy and I tried to set up a trade for like half an hour, its hanging and stopping me from browsing his inventory, etc. etc. Also can't get to the auction stuff. Think they're getting DDOSed by the same people that have been doing LOL, DOTA, etc., the last few days. Origin is also down.

This behavior is acceptable then.

Looks like Steam finally fixed itself at least.

And it's down again.

Not sure what you plan on doing with snowglobes but I have plenty left. I think I have one copy of all of them. Before scamming me into giving it to you for free, what are these again? Some unique items into a dozen games I am not playing, correct? Is that it?

There are non-game specific items as well like emotes, wallpapers, increases in max friends list size, etc.

The sale badge, as one of the 3 things you get for making a badge, gives you an item for one of 10 free to play games.

DotA 2
Path of Exile
Ragnarok Online
Realm of the Mad God
Spiral Knights
Star Conflict
Stronghold Kingdoms
Team Fortress 2
War Thunder
Warframe

The rest are the usual things for making a badge.
100XP, an emote and a background.

If you put a number on something, no matter how little it means, some people will get caught up in making sure their number is bigger (http://steamcommunity.com/id/Stalin-Chan/gamecards/267420/) than anyone elses. In this case a level 1506 (and presumably still going) snow globe badge.

 :ye_gods: :uhrr:

At ~$0.16 a card that's $2,409.60

And in 3 hours they all disappear.

I hate that these trade requests never work if not done manually. >_<


Blow me, Steam.

I spent ten cents to get two cards to finish my Guns of Icarus badge, then got a snowglobe card (as a reward for crafting the GoI badge) which I then sold for seventeen cents.  WINNING!

They were working for me a few days ago. It'd would say there was an error, then in a second the trade would go through anyway.

I have one hour to accept this trade from Trippy :(

It almost makes me want to generate a script to buy badges next sale.  Buy low, sell high.  Especially if making badges generates more cards.

I thought about doing that manually, but the price didn't fluctuate enough while I was watching to cover the $0.02 cost for Steam's cut.

Manually you couldn't do it.  Automating it though, and I bet you could make a small profit.  Not enough to get rich, but enough to buy several games through the year.

I came out of this with two coupons for 50% off on Crusader Kings II, good until Feb 1. If by some chance anyone wants one, PM me...

Same if anyone wants. Also have a 75% off Droid Assault... whatever that is.

I don't think you can guarantee that cards will increase in value by that much, though; it seems like they're more likely to go down as more people get the cards.  The snowglobe cards might be an exception since the price seemed to go up as people got more desperate to cash them in before they went poof.  In retrospect it might have been smart to buy up a few dollars worth at the start of the event.

I didn't say it would be easy, but basically the program would have to follow current prices and try to snipe cheap cards while selling them for at least a few pennies of profit.  Which is why I don't think you'll amass a fortune on it, but if it proves to work, you can set it lose during non-sale times, too.  The holiday sales just give you a good set of cards to focus on because you'll know there's a lot of trading happening with them.

I would not be surprised if there are already scripts doing this.

Based on how quick things were "already sold.." when I was buying a few to complete my last badge, there are.  Refresh, badge sold.

So in general is it more profitable to sell foils or unpack them and hope the cards are wroth anything.  I got the walking dead foil randomly which apparently sells for 60 cents.

That's part of what made me think about this.  The guy with the level 1601 badge pretty much proved it.

If they'd turn the auctioning around and make it a "I'll buy X card for Y cents", it'd take a lot of steam out of such scripts.

Nothing like a good pun in the morning.

You can just gift cards to people and not go through that trade thing?  I still even have that Torchwood 2 card that I tried to give Schild a million years ago.  Because I would be willing to just give them away (not hat I have more than four) rather than read this entire thread and try to sort out what the fuck every one is talking about.  People sound frustrated so I can't be arsed to read the destructions on Steam, either.  I have enough frustration just trying to cope with the universe.

I'm super frustrated and would like all of your cards.

My four cards probably won't make you less frustrated but I'm happy to say that Steam added the ability to give away the cards without having to choose items from the other person.  It wouldn't let me do that before. 

Yeah, but it didn't work for us when I tried to give Schild one the other day.  We ended up having to both be online to do it.

I went through the trade thingy, put my trade in and clicked I was done.  It warned me that I was going to lose all my cards and not get anything and I said okay.  I THINK it worked.  It looked like it did but I'm not entirely sure of anything especially after the tragic Wikipedia incident I had earlier.

I checked Steam and the cards I sent to Yeg were accepted so the trade DID go through okay.  I don't know this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  It's borked I tuess.

I'm noticeably less frustrated, thank you.

The biggest error I've heard with the trades recently has been when you've set everything up and hit accept, it can tell you there was an error and to try again later.
A lot of the time this actually means that everything completed successful, but some of the time it means try again later.

I'm glad it worked out for you both.

I've never had a problem with it, unlike buying games which craps out all the time.

It was having all kinds of trouble during the DOS attacks towards the end of the winter sale but otherwise it seems solid.

I realized today that Steam cards provide me with a good strategy for working through my backlog.  Play each game with cards long enough to get all the free card drops (a couple of hours or so) -- if it's not fun enough that I want to keep playing it after that point, uninstall and move to the next one.

Really this is a good strategy in general and something I should do anyway, but the cards make it so that even if I'm skeptical about whether the game is worth giving those couple of hours to vs just playing something I already know is good, I can entice myself to do it with the promise of loots.

I'm enticed to leave the game running at the menu while I do other things.

I'm enticed to entirely ignore this stuff.

Can I have your cards?

Do you have 25¢? That shit ain't free!

 :grin:

I'm holding out for my Civ V stuff to be worth 2¢ each!

Not entirely, then. :oh_i_see:  Good luck with your speculating!

I got a Bastion foil card.  Only considered the possibility of trying to get a foil badge for about five seconds before realizing I was better off selling it for a buck to someone crazier than I.

I feel like cards have been losing their value.  I used to get 25 cents or so per card and recently I've been barely able to eek out 6 cents after steam fees. 

Maybe I'm just getting cards for games no one gives a shit about though....

Most of mine are sitting at 1-2¢ after Steam's cut.

Still, when they first came out I made enough for a couple free games, so that was cool.

I get the same impression, especially for new games, though I'm generally looking at 10¢ for the ones I sell.  If they were only like a penny a pop I'd probably just use them to level my account.  And some sets are still weirdly expensive, like Agarest cards going for somewhere around a buck each.

Foils seem to be pretty slow to shift.  Seems like whenever someone lands one they expect to sell it for huge returns, but nobody is buying them (at least the ones I'm selling).

The last few days, my card sales have jumped - of course that coincides with actually getting some cards out of the blue for Rocksmith 2014. Those are selling well - around .$20-.25 cents each.

Sold a Bioshock Infinite foil card for $0.79.   I wonder how many normal badges I could complete with that money.  :why_so_serious:

Do you get discounts for badges or something? What is the point of this?

To get OCD gamer freaks to pay you "real" money into your Steam Wallet for useless baubles so that you can buy other games on Steam with their money.  :why_so_serious:

The more badges you complete the more booster packs you get so you can get more badges.

Also you get emoticons and wallpaper.

Also shut up.

They missed the boat on one thing with this. They should have tied getting cards to achievements instead of just getting them for playtime. That would have made achievements actually have some small meaning instead of the way they are now, which is completely pointless and nobody cares.

Achievements being worthless is better than making them matter.  There isn't a standard to which achievements are held, Dust Force only has 1 achievement, for getting an S+ rank on every level (which is goddamn HARD), while other games give you achievements for easy stuff, like finishing the tutorial or killing your first enemy.  Plus, a lot of old games (System Shock 2, for example) would be difficult to modify to include achievements, but since cards are all handled by Steam, they can be implemented with almost no effort.

Tying cards to achievements still wouldn't make them matter.  :-P

You level up your account too which does stuff.

YES THEY WOULD! LALALALALA

I can not stress how stupid this entire system is and that it's hilarious people are participating in it at all.

You'd be stupid to ignore it if you can sell things for real money that have no actual value.

This was similar to making money in D3 when the AH was live.

Secret of the Magic Crystals is the worst thing ever made by a human.  But each of the four cards will sell for about a quarter, maybe because there are so few of them on the market.  The whole trading card thing is a fascinating case study in the value of artificial scarcity -- these cards are free for Valve to make and free for me to get (unless you count the time I spent playing this terrible game, but that was my morbid curiosity at work), but both Valve and I make money from them.

Looking back through my Gmail folder, apparently I got this from MrHat.  Who does not own it himself.  I can only assume that gift copies of this thing get passed around like fruitcake; I see a few other friends who own it too.

I'm with Schild on this one...

I find this statement amusing as its up to the individual whether achievements 'matter' (have meaning?) or not.

The game developer controls whether they're available or not, and how it ties into the game, but making it 'matter'? From the individual's perspective -- matter to *what*? Their entertainment value?

Achievements having a small meaning towards another goal and making them matter are semantics arguments.

What I wanted was for achievements to be the way you got Steam levels, which are inherently meaningless anyway. Instead, they did cards because they can make money on the AH exchanges. I get it, but it doesn't really do anything for me.

Not so -- when I hit level 20 I increased my card drop rate by 20%.

AND I got another slot on my profile page to display more badges and achievements in.

 :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious:

I'm level 15 and I have never gotten a card other than the initial ones you get when you first play a game. I'm not sure what the drop rate is, but it isn't good.

Yeah, I haven't gotten any booster packs yet either.  I am racking up a lot of eligibility though, so I'm sure it'll happen some day.

AFAIK it's there to keep the card pool a constant size.  Every time someone crafts cards into a badge, a few booster packs are randomly seeded to ensure that the market doesn't shrink.  So the drop rate is basically proportional to the rate at which people are crafting badges for that game.  I get about 2 packs a month, or so, I'd guess, and I'm eligible for about 100 games.