Yeah, I wish they could implement something of that sort, however they have a track record for not really listening to their community/not caring about it.

Those 3 methods wont ever work globally to chage the ratio. Valve needs to add some sort of metal sink, like making crafting more enjoyable/profitable like when you have gotten golden wrench by crafting, etc.

Since it's going to be given here. Here have been the ideas I've been formulating for a while.

1: Use contracts for weekly item drops (Instantly stops bot farms)

7 contracts a week, 1 weapon per contract, 1 a day. Premium users still get a chance for 14 total drops. 7 From contracts, other 7 from just play time. Cases/Crates/Taunts/Tools/Paints/Etc. still drop normally, or could be added as a chance w/ them

3: Add extra small drop chances to hat crafting (or just a new crafting such as Robo-Parts, or something else)

Crafting a hat has X chance to drop a paint, name tag, 2nd hat, etc.

Wouldn't really solve anything long term, but short term might entice someone to do it as you could get a decently higher chance of profit especially if you might get something such as Black or White paint.

Unlikely however, especially since that'd be giving a reason to not buy paints via the market/unbox them/etc.

2: Make stat-clocks craftable.

Civ Grade = 10 Ref. 10 Civ Grade = 1 Merc Grade, Etc. Etc.

It would drop strange skins to an extent, but honestly for the longevity it would be worth it. They would still retain general high end value though since crafting a Elite Grade clock would cost a ton anyhow. Especially for older gen-1 skins that could only be obtained via contracts, which cost a shit ton of trade-ups for a FN S version of it (S FN Bogtrotter for example is worth 20+ Keys, but only due to how it can only be obtained via luck or trade-up)

However even that might not be a good enough solution for long-term.

Also as far as I'm concerned, and from what I've heard. No one aside from bots, and those with multiple accounts, (or those flipping keys) will be willing to pay 50 ref or more for a key.

I'd be surprised if they even hit 50 especially due to backpack page/slot limits, because if you somehow have (for example) 3000 inv slots filled with keys/items. You'd need 50 ref to buy a key, so now you have 2951. But if you sell it for (Let's say 50.11) you'll go over to 3001... So you'd have to remove items to even continue selling keys for a profit.

Sure, people WILL be trading/buying keys if they need them. But for situations where you are at max pages, or your max slots for however many pages you have, that will come into play. Even more so if you think about what if keys were to hit 100 ref. That'd be 2 whole pages requires (1 BP Expander) just to buy a key... Along with that is having to click 100 bits of ref in a trade window.

Now I could be wrong, I probably may be wrong, but honestly anyone saying to them-self that paying 1 page for a key is fine, then well. Congrats I suppose, hope that you don't need to use your backpack for anything aside from metal and keys.

I hope the TF team can create some form of functioning sink with no exploits soon.

cool concept