[TF2] Feature Request: Halloween Spell transfer tool

[rabscootle]

Hi!

I was wondering if there was any chance that the TF2 Team could consider adding a tool that would allow for the transfer of Halloween Spells from one copy of an item to another. This could behave similar to the Strange Count Transfer Tool.

While I'd rather have spells be more accessible to newer players that joined after the Halloween events that offered it, having the option to move the existing ones to items people are more inclined to use (ie. Decorated Weapons, cosmetics from 2015 and onward) would be a decent middle-ground.

Edit: This post was not created to harm 'post-life' items or any specific spelled items. It's merely a request for a way to apply existing spells to items (or copies of items) that did not exist during the Halloween events that offered them.

[ShadowMan44]

I would absolutely love to have Halloween spells on weapon skins/war painted ones, I can't imagine how effing cool it would be to have an isotope unusual with the green flames on a flamethrower.

[FrozenDragon0]

While I did open a issue back in 2019 asking for the spells to be brought back I think this method might be better, however the only downside to transferring spells is that they will still be in limited numbers seeing they are only being moved from one item to another, but eitherway I'd love to see this added, considering Halloween is not far.

[FrozenDragon0]

I would absolutely love to have Halloween spells on weapon skins/war painted ones, I can't imagine how effing cool it would be to have an isotope unusual with the green flames on a flamethrower.

Some glitched isotope green flames skins do exist but they aren't cheap.

[Archetexture]

You really are just incredibly desperate to ruin every part of the trading community that you don't have any stake in. First with quickswitches, and now with Gun Mettle post life spells. I am not sure why you are hellbent on being the single most hated person in the entirety of tf2 trading, but you do you.

[FrozenDragon0]

You really are just incredibly desperate to ruin every part of the trading community that you don't have any stake in. First with quickswitches, and now with Gun Mettle post life spells. I am not sure why you are hellbent on being the single most hated person in the entirety of tf2 trading, but you do you.

How is it ruining the trading community adding a spell transfer tool item? It's not like it's producing any new spells, It's merely just moving a spell from one item to another.

[ShadowMan44]

You really are just incredibly desperate to ruin every part of the trading community that you don't have any stake in. First with quickswitches, and now with Gun Mettle post life spells. I am not sure why you are hellbent on being the single most hated person in the entirety of tf2 trading, but you do you.

What are you talking about dude It's not like they're asking to bring them back into distribution via halloween contract rewards or something.

[tlelievre26]

To clarify why this would be a disaster for trading, spells are an large market, probably the second largest market behind unusual hats when it comes to higher-end trading. The top of the line items in the spell market are what are called post-lifes, which are items that were released after spells were supposed to no longer be applicable but managed to obtain spells through various means. That makes these items extremely rare, and they are highly sought after by collectors and other traders. A tool like this would make these items essentially worthless, and would contradict Valve’s stated intention to keep spells unobtainable past a certain point in time. Even disregarding post lifes, this would be a bad idea because it would make essentially every spelled item be worth about the same amount when you can transfer spells between items at will. Rarity and desirability no longer becomes a factor when any item can have any spell. IIRC Dota did something similar with one of their main trading items, and it massively damaged that economy too.

Edit: I misread the original suggestion, did not realize the suggestion was to only allow transferring between copies of the same item, my bad. There are some post-life Gun Mettle skins that would have their value nuked by this (along with some other very specific items like spelled Strange Iron Bombers). It would still lose some collectors massive amounts on items that were supposed to never be obtainable again and further shake people’s trust that Valve would not interfere with the economy, which I think is a important point of consideration. That said, it would not be totally cataclysmic to the spell market. Still, I wanted to at least clarify why this has an impact on trading.

Also if kisak happens to be reading this, I didn’t get my account locked, TF2CutContent just blocked me from replying on Issue #4300 for disagreeing with him under the guise of “stopping new accounts from spamming issues” (this acc is over a year and a half old)

[rabscootle]

You really are just incredibly desperate to ruin every part of the trading community that you don't have any stake in. First with quickswitches, and now with Gun Mettle post life spells. I am not sure why you are hellbent on being the single most hated person in the entirety of tf2 trading, but you do you.

Please stop derailing threads involving economy functions. I have several spelled items I acquired during the Halloween 2012-2014 events and just wish to transfer them to weapon skins I also own (which for the sake of your comment, I'd like to mention were added after the Gun Mettle Update). This ticket is essentially a user story for a QoL feature most users would be thrilled to have.

By inheriting behavior from the Strange Count Transfer Tool, spell transfers would only work on copies of the same item. This means spells applied to weapons would only be transferable to other instances of the same weapon (ie. a spell applied to a Rocket Launcher can only be transferred to other Rocket Launchers).

Spells would still be unattainable via regular gameplay, and the stock of them would still be limited to what's currently available. This would only grant the ability for users to transfer them to copies of items they'd prefer to use (or did not exist during the Halloween events that dropped spells).

[tlelievre26]

One thing I would like to add is that if this is added (even though I don’t think it should be but I want to cover all bases), it should not be able to transfer individual spells onto items that already have spells on them. In other words, you cant move footprints onto an item with a paint spell on it. I think the best way for this to theoretically work is that it removes ALL spells from an item and moves them to another item while overwriting any spells that were on the second item. So if you move Rotten Orange Footprints to an item with Chromatic Corruption then it would output an item with just ROFP and not a double spell.

To prevent this from destroying the value of some spells, maybe it would be set up that you can only transfer to items of a same/similar quality. Spelled unusuals aren’t exactly a market on their own but do hold significant value, and transferring spells to them at will would make spells on unusuals essentially worthless. I think the best compromise is that you can’t transfer spells to unsuals from non-unusual items. This would (mostly) prevent post-life unusual weps from being impacted. With a few exceptions, non-unu spelled skins are not all that rare or expensive, although if somebody with more knowledge of the spell market than me would like to correct me on that feel free.

[FrozenDragon0]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/4308#issuecomment-1261114110

I disagree with this first point, you could already apply footprints with paint spells together back when spells were available, so I don't get why you wouldn't be allowed to do this with the transfer tool? Overwriting any spells on the 2nd item also isn't a good idea as that is effectively wiping the spell off the item for good with no way to get a new spell applied without the spell potion itself which is impossible.

Regarding weapon skins, spells should only be transferrable from weapons from a specific class to another weapon from the same class, Example: Strange double spelled Flame thrower/Degreaser --> Any strange flame thrower or degreaser skin, same principle applies to non-strange variants. Weapons that do not have warpaint/skin versions will simply just allow spells to transfer between item qualities, Unique double spelled Liberty Launcher --> Double spelled collector's Liberty Launcher.

This would work in similar fashion to cosmetics, you'd still beable to move a spell from one cosmetic to another but as long as it's part of the same class, Ex: Voices from Below Team Captain for soldier --> Any other soldier cosmetic including the graded items or if it's a Multi-class/All-class item. This would work a bit differently with strange quality cosmetics as unlike weapons a good chunk of strange cosmetics were not added until 2016 which is way past when spells could be glitched onto items. So you'd freely be allowed to transfer spells from a non-strange cosmetic to a strange one.

I do think spells should be transferrable onto unusual skins as there's not a lot of spelled post life unusual skins compared to normal weapon skins and due to this it'd basically make new unusual weapons not worth transferring the current spelled unusual skins over to as there's so little of them that exist. And this is something some people most likely want is new unusual spelled weapons. As for unusual hats I guess spells could be restricted with unusual hats in that so you can only transfer spells to different unusual hats provided it's for the same class or a multi-class/all-class item + goes for any graded cosmetic that can be unboxed in unusual quality.

Overall, I do not think adding this would damage the economy at all, considering that all current applied spells would still remain as the current supply and there's a lot of applied spells and this tool is merely just allowing the transfer of spells to new items whilst still keeping the current supply the same number.

[tlelievre26]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/4308#issuecomment-1261592722

I think you're missing my initial point a bit. The whole thing I'm trying to say is that a tool like this should AVOID putting spells on items that were not intended to have them before (so anything from EOTL and onward a.k.a post-lifes), with the exception of decorated weapons being able to receive spells by transfer. Post-lifes are the god tiers of the spell market specifically because they are extremely limited in distribution, making them highly desirable to collectors. If it was made possible to move spells onto items released after spells were discontinued, these items would go from god tier to unremarkable immediately, losing people tons of money on items that were supposed to be discontinued. I think non-unusual decorated weapons are the exception because they are probably the least desirable post lifes and only a few have very high end prices, so it's (in my opinion as a non-spell trader) not too bad of a loss in exchange for giving people a real nice boost to their skinned items. While it's totally justifiable to want spells on new items, doing so would unavoidably destroy the value of every post-life spell, which is completely unfair to the people who bought them when they were discontinued.

The other problem is that being able to freely transfer spells, even if just between class-shared items, would pretty much homogenize the prices of every spelled item. For example, despite spelled Dead of Nights and Earbuds not being particularly rare, these are some of the most expensive non-post-life spells because they're very popular cosmetics that work excellently with spells. If you were able to move spells from other items (even if it was limited to only transferring from other all-classes) onto an Buds or a DoN, everyone would move their spells onto them until the supply met up to the demand. This is the reason why Crone's Domes and Bill's Hats are not all that expensive with spells despite being massively popular hats with fantastic paint regions. They were so popular to apply spells to when spells still dropped that supply rose to match demand, making prices pretty average overall today. In other words, the ability to move spells to any item (even non-post-lifes) would eliminate the importance of the base item the spell is applied to, so spells would just turn into fancy paints. Another way to think about it: you could move unusual effects between hats, you could get a Burning TC for the same price as you could get a Burning Robo-Glove (plus the price of the transfer tool).

Hopefully this clarifies a little bit about how changes like this impact the economy, happy to answer any other questions.

[FrozenDragon0]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/4308#issuecomment-1261623972

Well regarding the 1st point, how bout this, all the current post life spelled items apart from the 2015 weapon skins and 2014 festive weapons would be untouchable via the transfer tool in order to keep their rarity, but any items added in Tough break and beyond which never could have spells applied to begin with would be accepted to having spells transferred onto them, at least this way the current post lifes would still continue to be god tier as you wouldn't be able to make any more of them.

As for the other points I made, it was just something I came up with, it comes down to how Valves wants to implement this if they do add this tool. But I would like to at least see spells on cosmetics added in Tough break and beyond.

[Platina6978]

While I'm rather neutral to this suggestion either way (as I don't really care for spells myself), I can see the perspective of both sides here. It would indeed be very cool for spells to become a little more accessible again to people who only came into the trading scene after they were discontinued, however, making them obtainable again is clearly a no-go. A transfer-like tool would be a great middle ground but indeed it should have the proper restrictions put onto it as to not put up a middle finger to people who bought spelled items being convinced that these spells would not longer be obtainable or even freely "movable".

What I'm trying to say is that I think rabscootle's original idea seems pretty great but the proper precautions in the implementation, as outlined by tlelievre26's comments