We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openings?

[Adamented]

why is everyone acting like being able to see the pets in advance is the problem. y’all DO REALIZE that’s been a thing for YEARSSSS. it isn’t new. it isn’t the cause of what everyone is saying. it’s not something that just magically happened during the update. IT ISNT THE PROBLEM.

It's also been a problem for "YEARSSSS"! We'd be better off without being able to see any of the pets, and distributing it randomly like a lottery system. That's what 'fair' looks like- equal chances for everyone, with no ability to predict. Then, the redistribution that is the goal of the whole thing works just as it should, but experienced players have the advantage of knowing what they're looking for taken away.

I'll make another analogy.

Imagine, there's a bowl of candy and two players in a carnival game. There are a bunch of random colors in there, but one player has been to the same event every year and knows "the green ones are the winning ones, I'll grab that". The other player is at the event for the first time, or has come every year but never played this game before. The less-informed player thinks they'll just grab randomly, while the experienced player has a plan. The experienced player sees a green candy at the edge of the bowl and when it's their turn, they go right for it. The inexperienced player reaches in... and maybe they'll accidentally get a green, but they aren't aiming for it, so with 10 other colors at least they're very unlikely to grab the winning one.

Now imagine the same game, but now they are both blindfolded before they reach into the candy bowl. Either might grab green candy, the winning color, but with 10 other colors at least they are both as unlikely to grab one, and have an equal chance to win.

Now which of those sounds more fair?

It's not the first one.

[chase.]

why is everyone acting like being able to see the pets in advance is the problem. y’all DO REALIZE that’s been a thing for YEARSSSS. it isn’t new. it isn’t the cause of what everyone is saying. it’s not something that just magically happened during the update. IT ISNT THE PROBLEM.

It's also been a problem for "YEARSSSS"! We'd be better off without being able to see any of the pets, and distributing it randomly like a lottery system. That's what 'fair' looks like- equal chances for everyone, with no ability to predict. Then, the redistribution that is the goal of the whole thing works just as it should, but experienced players have the advantage of knowing what they're looking for taken away.

I'll make another analogy.

Imagine, there's a bowl of candy and two players in a carnival game. There are a bunch of random colors in there, but one player has been to the same event every year and knows "the green ones are the winning ones, I'll grab that". The other player is at the event for the first time, or has come every year but never played this game before. The less-informed player thinks they'll just grab randomly, while the experienced player has a plan. The experienced player sees a green candy at the edge of the bowl and when it's their turn, they go right for it. The inexperienced player reaches in... and maybe they'll accidentally get a green, but they aren't aiming for it, so with 10 other colors at least they're very unlikely to grab the winning one.

Now imagine the same game, but now they are both blindfolded before they reach into the candy bowl. Either might grab green candy, the winning color, but with 10 other colors at least they are both as unlikely to grab one, and have an equal chance to win.

Now which of those sounds more fair?

It's not the first one.

I understand this point, but also a lot of experienced players can recognise rares and such on sight, we’ve just been here for longer. if anything, letting people see the pets beforehand means newer players have a chance to familiarise themselves with what pets are rare.

i understand the argument that maybe making the fact you can see pets beforehand a bit more clear, but then again sometimes people should just have a look around? it sounds harsh but spoon-feeding people is a bit much. I know it took me months to figure that out and I only learnt that the pets are organised by date a few months ago.

there’s also no harm in a system that slightly rewards more active players/players that have been here for longer [which is kinda what the pound is because as said before, we can recognise a lot of pets] it’s not something we were just selected to be able to do, if anyone is active enough or is here for long enough, eventually they’ll learn too.

maybe I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but sometimes I think we’re getting too “soft”, I say let it keep being a free for all. People learn with time.

[bookshelf]

(apologies in advance for the long post, i might have gotten carried away)

the odds aren't as straightforward as you make them out to be.
according to the pound rarity data, ~87% of pets are below rare and ~13% are rare+. however, that is just the data for the entire pool, not the distribution on actual user pages or the odds of every individual player. it does not mean everyone always has a 13% chance to get a rare or that 13% of pets on each individual page are rares.

your pound page only shows you 20 pets out of ~1300, which is only about a 1.5% of the pool. i'm not good at calculating probability, but i'm pretty sure the odds of you seeing one, let alone more, rare in that small fraction of the pool are not that high and definitely not a 100%. i assume each of those 20 randomly pulled pets only has a 13% chance of being one of the rares, meaning you have a 13% chance of seeing one, and increasingly smaller chances of seeing more than one (someone who is good at math feel free to correct me, i looked at the formulas for calculating this and they're insanely incomprehensible).

x

interestingly this is not quite true. the odds of seeing a rare pet in a sample of 20 are MUCH higher than the odds of an individual pet being rare (that's the beauty of factorials).
let me try to compute it!
there's currently 1322 pets in the pound, 97 of which are rare (only 7.3%!!).
we can't account for any unnatural distribution or the fact that rare pets are now scattered throughout the first few pages, so assuming your first page of 20 pets is a truly random sample, you can find the probability of seeing a rare pet as follows:

# of ways you can see NO rare pets: c(1225, 20) = 1225!/[(1225-20)!20!] = 2.04 x 10^43 (giant number btw)
# of ways you can see pets: c(1322, 20) = 1322!/[(1322-20)!20!] = 9.46 x 10^43 (even gianter number btw)

now we can take a percentage by taking ways of seeing no rare pets/ways of seeing pets which gives about 22% of seeing no rare pets.
yup, that means there's a 78% chance of seeing at least one rare pet

this makes sense if you think about it because 20 pets is kind of a huge sample. 1322/20 is 66, which is less than 97, suggesting a distribution of more than 1 rare to 20 pets. the reason it's so hard to snag one is because tons of people are seeing the rare at the same time, so you have to be quick to snag it.

this does seem to be quite a big number, so in reality it's probably lower because of the behind-the-scenes manipulation of page distribution. and the new feature that spreads rare pets out is going to further make this number lower because it cuts the pool of rare pets available on the first page down quite a bit.

i also think our perception of pound rarity is skewed because most users probably just don't recognize many rares when they see them. like, did you know this chicken was rare? i certainly would have missed it.

however it's definitely true that the odds of seeing more than one are MUCH MUCH lower than the odds of seeing one. for example the odds of you getting a page of 20 rares is 135114119146959387435/94575315226397539842194003664749840563259356, which ends up being 0.00000000000000000000014% lol. so basically it's never going to happen.

(also, you said it doesn't mean that 13% of the pets on your page are rares: it actually DOES mean that. if the sample of 20 is truly random, it should represent the whole, meaning 13% of the pets on a page of 20 should be rare+ and 87% should be below rare, the same way 13% of the pets on a page of 100 or 200 or whatever number you choose should be rare+. of course it's unlikely you would get that exact distribution but it should be the average)(but then again it's prob not a random sample so)

if anyone wants to check my math please please please feel free!!! math was never my strong suit so i could have made errors.

[Cloverstream]

… 😭 It really seems like you guys just want to punish players who are more active than you. I have never seen a user base so dedicated to wanting 0 incentive to play. Doing nothing, not even being there on time and getting some randomly assigned common I didn’t pick out myself sounds like the least rewarding game experience I could think of. I’m sorry if this is rude I’m not trying to target it at any one individual I just? I’m confused.

My ideal is the pound being open enough everyone has an opening time they can make, with no lag (thank you Nick for the improvements on that) so everyone has the same shot.

[.Vellichor.]

I work from home which gives me ample time to frequent my favorite pet sites during the day. I would consider myself very privileged in that respect and I still have a very difficult time catching the pound being open. If I find it slightly frustrating, I can only imagine how frustrated players who have school, work, or other obligations that restrict their CS time might feel.

So if the only two options are "stay where we are" and "have even less openings," I'm going with "stay where we are."

I do very much enjoy the addition of the "Already Taken" sticker updating live, though. It feels like making decisions is easier now.

[fuyunofabuki]

I think we need to stay as is. Especially with the auto update with the pound. I just went through my first pound with it missed a lot of really good pets but was able to snag one as well due to it updating as I clicked it before I clicked and not having me go to the “oops” page I feel the pound as is will now be more streamlined

[Darni]

… 😭 It really seems like you guys just want to punish players who are more active than you. I have never seen a user base so dedicated to wanting 0 incentive to play. Doing nothing, not even being there on time and getting some randomly assigned common I didn’t pick out myself sounds like the least rewarding game experience I could think of. I’m sorry if this is rude I’m not trying to target it at any one individual I just? I’m confused.

My ideal is the pound being open enough everyone has an opening time they can make, with no lag (thank you Nick for the improvements on that) so everyone has the same shot.

I'm going to say in my opinion saying "seems like you guys just want to punish players who are more active than you" seems extremely entitled and comes off as as you are trying to guilt others who don't have the same line of thinking as you. This might not have been your intention and that's fine, but as someone who is also given the opportunity to play more because working from home and what not this comes off as extremely bad. I love that I get to check pound more often than my friends, but min/maxxing pound in my opinion is weird to me (again this is my personal opinion). As someone who is newer (only a little over a year of playing) I have dealt with a lot of issues trying to even get into CS; Hoarders, inflation, hackers, ect are all extremely hard hurdles and to on top of that also deal with not being able to go to pound because of a job or other reasons can be super frustrating. Having a friendly discussion about it and being open to hearing everyone out is a lot better than just being passive aggressive over opinions. That being said I don't know which solution would work best or if an whole different option / pound overhaul is needed.

[Minimanta]

I decided not to vote, I'm completely indifferent to either option. Not big on the pound, I just grab a pet whenever I find it open.

...But I do gotta say, people are WAY too obsessed about getting rares from the pound. That's not exactly the point of the pound, never was. The pound is here to rehome pets, not to line your pockets with gold... Just saying. Just grab a pet you like (or miss) and take it like an extra treat if it happens to be rare+.
I am viciously against pound specific wishlists. The pound is not meant for getting rares even if that's how you treat it.

[Darni]

-snip-

I don't think I ever said I expect them to materialize, but from your response I no longer want to engage in this discussion with you. Appreciate you taking time to respond.

Edit: I'm sorry if this came off as rude I didn't mean it to be. I just didn't want to discuss anymore and didn't want anyone waiting for a response. I should have said that.

[Cloverstream]

-snip-

I don't think I ever said I expect them to materialize, but from your response I no longer want to engage in this discussion with you. Appreciate you taking time to respond.

Well those were the issues I was referring to in my message that you were responding too. No need to reply if you don’t want too, have a nice day.