[TF2] [Item/Feature Request] More metal tiers and/or new strangifier chemistry sets that require metal like series 3 ones.

[jh34ghu43gu]

As of writing, when using metal for trading you need over a page's worth of metal to get to a key, which is what a majority of players use as the next "denomination". This creates both a problem for traders and a problem for the item servers since more items moving takes players more time to click and takes the item servers more time to process.

The easiest solution is to simply add a couple more metal tiers; possibly even ones that require more than 3 refined to create. Adding 2 more tiers that require 9 of the previous metal each to craft would move the top-metal to key ratio down to slightly less than a 1:1 right now, which would effective reset it back to the start of trading meaning it'd be another decade before the ratio got past the page barrier. Name ideas for these tiers could be "Scientific", "Perfect" (probably not this one since it closes off more tiers in the future), "Radiant", and "Impeccable".

Metal tiers has been mentioned in the comments of #3464 but doesn't directly apply to the main issue of that thread.

Alternatively, a much more temporary solution would be to add a series 4 strangifier chemistry set for all the missing strange weapons (there is a list in this workshop submission I made for adding these strangifiers in a crate), which would have the benefit of hitting 2 birds with one stone since many of these strange variants have been requested for years. Although these would have to take a lot more metal than the series 3 ones did to have any impact I would imagine, something like 100 refined each. Tangentially related to #4284 .

Possibly even combine the two and add the chem sets that require 4 of the new highest tier metals :) Three birds in one stone there.

[FrozenDragon0]

This would be great to see, considering the price of keys in refined metal right now it's absolutely ridiculous, so having more uses for refined metal apart from crafting hats would be an excellent addition for the trading scene.

[worMatty]

Hmm. I wonder if it would be better if some items like refined metal were stackable? Rather than taking up a slot each, a variable amount could take up one slot. When trading, you could take a specific quantity from the stack and put it in the window in one action.

[jh34ghu43gu]

Hmm. I wonder if it would be better if some items like refined metal were stackable? Rather than taking up a slot each, a variable amount could take up one slot. When trading, you could take a specific quantity from the stack and put it in the window in one action.

With my understanding of the item system structure, this (stacking) only works with consumables and would be impracticable to implement for any other item.

[MeatwadMeatwad]

This is a good idea, but I believe having more things to craft with these new metal tiers would be needed, maybe every update introducing a craft-only keyless skin or hat case would be nice as a way to keep a consistent flow of things to use metal on. Also improving the crafting system by being able to craft stuff in bulk would save people time by avoiding the constant monotony of drag & dropping stuff one by one. (would also help with collector's and killstreak fabricators) Letting people add craft materials in large increments like x3, x6, x9, etc. and being able to craft directly to a specific metal tier with lesser tiers (like crafting ref with scrap directly) would let people avoid constantly hopping between stuff in the crafting pages.