Disclaimer: This thread is intended as a constructive space, please don't use it to be hateful to the staff, community, or players.
I started playing CS back in 2010 when my sister made an account for me and I didn't really know what I was doing and didn't play much. I tried picking it up again in about 2021 however it didn't last long again. Finally in November of 2023 I returned properly and have been trying to build up my collection since.
Something I've noticed while doing so is there's certain pets that are difficult to come across, even with lower rarities, and I've seen others discuss this too. Most notably of recent there's been an issue with trading for monthly pet outcomes to the point of needing to offer rares at minimum to even be considered by many players. This is obviously due to the results of the poll that concluded to include rares in monthly litters from time to time, however I believe this has left a negative impact instead. It seems near impossible for newer players to trade for even monthly pets at the moment as they don't have the fodder a lot of players ask for, and it just seems unfair and needlessly stressful. Instead of the joy of waiting to see what each pet becomes a lot of players now are anxious to try and trade for something missing.
This carries on to my next point of hoarding these monthlies for profit. Hoarding in general has mixed opinions, I personally don't mind it and have two or three little ones myself, but it undoubtably accounts for many of the issues in the trading pool. Due to players having X amount of one pet, there's less in circulation and thus prices for them skyrocket. Prime examples of this are the 2013 Slumber Party event pets and the 2021 golden gacha dog. Whilst it's impossible to ban hoarding as it'd be highly unfair to players who have established hoards already, and they're free to do so if they have the means, it may be wise to have ways to brings pets like this into circulation again.
Lastly the trading values can be confusing to new players as they're technically not official from the CS team, they're made by us as a community. For some it's the 3 month rule, others use the 2:1, and majority rely on Horror's List/Guide (myself included). This has its downsides since pet values fluctuate and the list doesn't always account for that, but that's where the VR - OMGSR Trading thread does come in handy, however it also doesn't account for values of pets below Very Rare. (I have a separate thread for discussing those! Shameless plug here it is: Pets with Confusing Worth Chat)
It's difficult to say how this can be fixed as just changing the worth of every pet VR+ would be unfair to those who traded for them previously, but it could be a possibility.
After discussing with some CS friends we came up with the following suggestions:
- A second version of December 18th, perhaps in summer, to bring more pets into circulation
- A summer 18th with exclusively event pet re-releases
- Establish some rules regarding hoarding pets (difficult to work around for many reasons)
- Monitor players needlessly bumping up monthly pets and maybe give light punishment for doing so to discourage it
- Have an admin posted official trading guide / trading values
And I ask you all the following questions:
- How do you think the trading pool can be fixed?
- Do you have any personal experiences of note?
- How do you feel about this issue as a whole?
Thanks for reading!! I hope this doesn't come across as hateful to the CS team as that's certainly not the intention, I just want to see if we as a community can think of ways around this issue :>
[Thank you to ToPathosMathos for helping me draft this and come up with ideas!]