I agree with Music, on my rarity indicators, I don't even use the one that has multiple stars on it. I think it looks clunky/ugly.
Using the star system would be super confusing for me.
Keeping in mind that 2 of the options don't even include the stars, I think it's intended that people use OMGSC, EC, VC, C, UC, etc as labels rather than the stars themselves. The only two displays I actually like are the ones without the multiple stars, funnily enough. I only visually like the "notched bar" and the "bar with single star" options.
I do get where chantolove is coming from, it just makes it a little more nonsensical to me. It definitely doesn't make sense that a 0* and a 1* might be able to swap, but here we are.
I also had to go to the above thing to check what a 1 star even is, and was surprised to see that a 1 star is a Very Common, and not either a Common or an Uncommon. Intuitively, I'd think a 1-star would be a "common" or "uncommon" and a 0-star would be an "OMGSC" but the problem with that is that there are 2 rarities between OMGSC and Common.
Basically, the star rating as a whole feels unintuitive to me. If I were making rarities it would be that 0-star and its fractions would be OMGSC-VC/C, 1-2 would be Uncommon, VUC, EUC, Rares would be 3*, VR 4*, showing the gap between each rarity as I personally view them. And then Idk where ER and OMGSR would be, since I think there's an even bigger gap between those. It kind of feels like ranking them on a scale of 1-10.
To me, it doesn't feel like there's a massive gap between OMGSC and C, nor an UC and VUC, but it does feel like there's a massive gap between Rares and Very Rares.
So for me, Rarity trading
feels like a 1-10 ranking:
0 - OMGSC
1/3 - EC
2/3 - VC
1 - C
1 1/3 - UC
1 2/3 - VUC
2 - EUC
3 - R
4 - VR
6 - ER
10 - OMGSR
Some of the following analogies I'm making are using USD/American money examples, feel free to convert it into your currency of choice to keep the analogy, whatever makes the most sense to you. Some of the stuff I'm talking about might also just be a U.S. thing, I don't know enough about how other cultures treat money to know.
It takes very few OMGSC-VC to swap around with each other, as well as UC-VUC. A jump to a new number = a more significant gap mentally, meaning that even though the "One and Two-Thirds" of a VUC is still only "One-Third" away from EUC, the fact it brings it up to 2 makes it feel bigger to me (which is how I feel about trading Uncommons). Kind of like the psychological aspect of stores where they'll write "$1.99" on things to make you go, "Oh! That's only $1!" When actually it's literally $2, but in reverse.
You could almost represent a jump up in star value as a "1:2" ratio, and anything within the same star value as an "eh its not that much of a difference between pets, I'd take something unfair, its not worth the time/effort to come up with something fair every single time."
So the bigger gap between valuations means more you have to offer, and if it makes it a new/whole number then its inherently different.
It would take quite a few ERs for me to trade for an OMGSR, so much so that Idk how many it'd even be, heavily depending on the pet itself.
I think maybe like 1:3 or 1:4 for ER:VR, and 1:2 is fine for VR:R as a baseline.
So I feel better when trading VUCs up to EUCs than I feel about trading EUCs down to VUCs. If I have $2, Idk if I wanna trade it for $1 and some change that adds up to $2, especially not in an economy where your change isn't worth as much as the full dollar to quite a few people.
But, if I have 33 cents, and somebody needs some change, I'm happy to give it away if I have it to spare. This is how I feel about pets OMGSC-C. It's less than a dollar. Kind of like how people go, "Keep the change" because they don't want to deal with having it.
Sometimes, (especially for the people who have lots of valuable things), Commons and Under are more of an inconvenience to own and figure out fair trades for than the actual value of it is worth. But for people who only have a few dollars, that 33 cents goes a long way. To ones with higher value, it's like if we were printing money, but the cost of printing the money (for this analogy: the inherent labor of trading commons and under for equal value amongst themselves) was worth more than the money (commons) itself.
Yes, two quarters (0.25 each) and a dime (0.10) does not equal 3 quarters (0.75 total) , but its such a tiny amount that nitpicking it is not worth the energy for somebody who has thousands of dollars. If something costs $1.89, and I give you $2.00 for it, sometimes I just don't want my 11 cents. It's more of an inconvenience for you to hand me the 11 cents, put it in my wallet, and then find a use for 11 cents later, than it is for me to just stop acknowledging the 11 cents as existing and eating it as a "cost" of the trade. But for someone who only has $3 to trade in the beginning, that 11 cents is important and they will want it.
Pets that are OMGSC-C are often not worth figuring out a fair trade for to people who have high-value pets, because they are so low-value. Which is why the option of "All commons (and below) can swap evenly" is there. I'm also more likely to give away pets that are lower in rarity. So if the change is something like 75 cents, I'm more likely to want it back, but if its less than 25 cents then I probably don't care too much about it, if I can afford to not care at the time.
In this way, you can also think of Hoarders of one outcome as Specific Coin Collectors. Maybe they're willing to pay $100 for a bunch of Quarters with a specific state on the back that only total $25, because otherwise the quarters are spread out, not in one place, and laborious to trade individually for. It's kind of like hiring somebody else to collect the quarters for you, and paying for your time. (I'm talking about those auctions where people trade list pets for massive boosts to their hoards- like
this)
Sorry I got kind of rambly there, but I do enjoy rambling about how I feel about pets on CS in relation to money irl. It feels very similar and intuitive to me.
