COMMUNITY POLL: Rare Monthly Pets

[cinimimi]

I don't like this idea. It seems that most of the players that support that are using "new players can get rare, this is good" argument, which for me doesn't make any sense. Everyone has pretty much guaranteed rares multiple times a year - on events. And at least there everything doesn't depend on one click, you can try to roll for outcome multiple time with tokens. If people want "rare" fodder for trades they are free to stock up on event pets with spare tokens.

I already dislike the random unreasonably small chance for some pets, like last year's banner dragon which is "very rare" now btw. Banner pets in general are a great example of panicky mindset of people - the second new banner pet pops up people are offering/expecting to get crazy amounts of pets or C$ for it. People want to just be done with it and spare themselves hours of searching later. Do people voting for "yes" expect something any different on rare monthly pets? If anything it will be even worse because you'll get only one click chance of getting the monthly outcome.
We already have some situations like that in monthly outcomes or small events - for example if literally almost any lion litter on any occasion has a PPS outcome, its a massive headache to try to get yourself one if you weren't lucky enough to pull it. The moment I see litter with something like that I just give up with the search because I'm tired of wasting time on scrolling through trade posts where everyone is looking for the same single thing. And majority of voters want to see this more often??

tl;dr I guess there would be a MASSIVE change of minds the second this thing comes into live and people supporting this change won't get lucky with one click...

[Wired]

I don't mind rare outcomes in monthly litters every once in a while, but for me seeing a swap thread where 90% of comments are folks looking for the same one pet is not fun at all, and I dread being on the short end of the stick even more often. I would much rather have more pets with more diverse rarities in monthly litters, than have a single random rare slapped among them.

For example, let's just look at August and September releases - vast majority of pets are either very common or extremely common. You have just updated your rarity system - use it! Why not have more uncommon, very uncommon, extremely uncommon pets? It has plenty of benefits:
1) they wouldn't be as hard to trade for as a rare would, while keeping the feeling of getting a less common outcome,
2) if everything is very common then I really don't have an incentive to trade with others - I will rarely be missing more than 3-4 pets for an entire month, so my trading activity is small. But this would increase trading activity without demanding me to browse the swap thread for hours and speedruning sending trades,
3) the pets will become rare faster than a super common, so it will become a viable trade option for older pets sooner,
4) if you decide on a given month to also add a rare outcome on top of diverse rarities, it might also create a situation where the lucky owner may be more interested in trading his pet for the monthly uncommon pet(s) that he missed, rather than creating insane demand that boosts the prices beyond sanity.

Of course, this would have to be properly balanced with the amount of pets that players can obtain each month. But I do believe that there's a golden (ha ha, golden gacha dog) middle to find between satisfying the rare seekers and the casual players. Looking for a rare litter outcome can be tedious and frustrating, but it really doesn't have to be.

There's already over 10 years worth of challenges and goals for people who are interested in challenging themselves with trading hard to obtain pets.

Also, another thing I'm afraid of is that there's already lot of foul play on the forum from players who mass buy rare outcomes from unsuspecting players for massive underpay (sorry, "very fair price" of 1c$) for resale, and monthly rare outcomes will only further promote this behavior.

THIS! I think it would be fun to have one litter a year with a straight-up rare outcome, but this makes it fun whilst also balancing the trading system

[Pallastronomy]

I don't mind rare outcomes in monthly litters every once in a while, but for me seeing a swap thread where 90% of comments are folks looking for the same one pet is not fun at all, and I dread being on the short end of the stick even more often. I would much rather have more pets with more diverse rarities in monthly litters, than have a single random rare slapped among them.

For example, let's just look at August and September releases - vast majority of pets are either very common or extremely common. You have just updated your rarity system - use it! Why not have more uncommon, very uncommon, extremely uncommon pets? It has plenty of benefits:
1) they wouldn't be as hard to trade for as a rare would, while keeping the feeling of getting a less common outcome,
2) if everything is very common then I really don't have an incentive to trade with others - I will rarely be missing more than 3-4 pets for an entire month, so my trading activity is small. But this would increase trading activity without demanding me to browse the swap thread for hours and speedruning sending trades,
3) the pets will become rare faster than a super common, so it will become a viable trade option for older pets sooner,
4) if you decide on a given month to also add a rare outcome on top of diverse rarities, it might also create a situation where the lucky owner may be more interested in trading his pet for the monthly uncommon pet(s) that he missed, rather than creating insane demand that boosts the prices beyond sanity.

Of course, this would have to be properly balanced with the amount of pets that players can obtain each month. But I do believe that there's a golden (ha ha, golden gacha dog) middle to find between satisfying the rare seekers and the casual players. Looking for a rare litter outcome can be tedious and frustrating, but it really doesn't have to be.

There's already over 10 years worth of challenges and goals for people who are interested in challenging themselves with trading hard to obtain pets.

Also, another thing I'm afraid of is that there's already lot of foul play on the forum from players who mass buy rare outcomes from unsuspecting players for massive underpay (sorry, "very fair price" of 1c$) for resale, and monthly rare outcomes will only further promote this behavior.

THIS! I think it would be fun to have one litter a year with a straight-up rare outcome, but this makes it fun whilst also balancing the trading system

^^^ All of this 100%!!

[SabrinaB]

I think 1-4 rare outcomes a year is enough. See post above for the reasons why.
And the greed... the things people want for it...
And people get stressed put over it, so they will pay that much and feed.the greed. Newer members cant affort that.

[ShadowKatto]

After reading some replies, I think a few litters a year with rare outcomes would be better than a month.

[The Turtle Guy]

this is a cool idea! i like the idea of "hey look its a cool dog i adopted and oh hey its worth something"

[Papilio Ulysses]

For example, let's just look at August and September releases - vast majority of pets are either very common or extremely common. You have just updated your rarity system - use it! Why not have more uncommon, very uncommon, extremely uncommon pets? It has plenty of benefits:
1) they wouldn't be as hard to trade for as a rare would, while keeping the feeling of getting a less common outcome,
2) if everything is very common then I really don't have an incentive to trade with others - I will rarely be missing more than 3-4 pets for an entire month, so my trading activity is small. But this would increase trading activity without demanding me to browse the swap thread for hours and speedruning sending trades,
3) the pets will become rare faster than a super common, so it will become a viable trade option for older pets sooner,
4) if you decide on a given month to also add a rare outcome on top of diverse rarities, it might also create a situation where the lucky owner may be more interested in trading his pet for the monthly uncommon pet(s) that he missed, rather than creating insane demand that boosts the prices beyond sanity.

Support and agreed. I think the suggestions here are a reasonable middle ground to the options on the poll.

Newly released rarer outcomes don't really help newer players any more than older players. We all have the same probabilities when adopting. Besides December 18th, a new player is more likely to get non-event rare outcomes from the Pound or the Free Adoptions forum more than ever.
I was a brand new player in the same month that the PeaPS was released. I failed to adopt it. My collection was tiny with no viable duplicates to offer. I couldn't swap or trade for it at all. Either no one would accept my offers or my trades were auto-cancelled in seconds - over and over again. I was only able to acquire one from a (stressfully quick) newborn giveaway held on the very last day of August 2010. At 16 days, it grew into the PeaPS. While I was astounded and remain grateful, I didn't enjoy the overall process.

I also believe that releasing monthly rare outcomes would exacerbate the overpay culture... As well as unfair trades targeted at newer or more casual players who may not be aware of the value of such pets.

[softpaw]

this is a cool idea! i like the idea of "hey look its a cool dog i adopted and oh hey its worth something"

This is also really how I see it at the end of the day - for me the most valuable pets are the ones I adopted myself, and the chance of adopting something value is fun to me even if I miss out! I am really enjoying reading other peoples POV on this though, even though I personally don't think a couple of extra rares a year will dramatically change the trading scene.

Looking at the results of the poll, 5151/5739 users voted that they want more rare outcomes in monthly litters in some form. I am curious to see how they will balance any implementation of this - I don't know if it is a silent majority type situation but if I read the thread here without looking at the results of the poll I would think almost nobody wanted this! I'm very excited to see whatever happens next regardless.

[Polly44]

For example, let's just look at August and September releases - vast majority of pets are either very common or extremely common. You have just updated your rarity system - use it! Why not have more uncommon, very uncommon, extremely uncommon pets? It has plenty of benefits:
1) they wouldn't be as hard to trade for as a rare would, while keeping the feeling of getting a less common outcome,
2) if everything is very common then I really don't have an incentive to trade with others - I will rarely be missing more than 3-4 pets for an entire month, so my trading activity is small. But this would increase trading activity without demanding me to browse the swap thread for hours and speedruning sending trades,
3) the pets will become rare faster than a super common, so it will become a viable trade option for older pets sooner,
4) if you decide on a given month to also add a rare outcome on top of diverse rarities, it might also create a situation where the lucky owner may be more interested in trading his pet for the monthly uncommon pet(s) that he missed, rather than creating insane demand that boosts the prices beyond sanity.

Of course, this would have to be properly balanced with the amount of pets that players can obtain each month. But I do believe that there's a golden (ha ha, golden gacha dog) middle to find between satisfying the rare seekers and the casual players. Looking for a rare litter outcome can be tedious and frustrating, but it really doesn't have to be.

There's already over 10 years worth of challenges and goals for people who are interested in challenging themselves with trading hard to obtain pets.

This, absolutely this. Why on earth do so many of the monthlies end up as the same two ridiculously common rarities. It is so boring, nobody cares about them and they are worth nothing as trade fodder. Not everything in this game needs to be rare or above to have value. Where are the uncommon/extremely uncommon pets?

[UR Kob]

I've been here since 2010 and only casually come back every so often since 2014. As someone who remembers back then and experiences lapses in playing, I think having occasional rarer-than-common pets sprinkled in a few times a year is REALLY cool! It was my 3rd month playing and the excitement I had when I happened to get the St Patrick's Day Tess Dragon was through the roof! I feel like i remember seeing that happening a few times with monthly adopts, not necessarily rares but with just 1-2 uncommon outcomes in a litter, and sometimes a rare.

It definitely feels like a lot of pets are in the "common" area, which is a combo of rarity changes, active members adopting, adopted pets- so even just having more uncommon/extremely uncommon outcomes and not just straight up rares would be nice. It would buffer out newer players' (and returning players') trading arsenals for more recent pets and make them not *just* reliant on the pound, events, or people quitting and giving away their pets. A foundation to trade up/wherever someone wants to go. I feel like for the past few years it's just *waves hands confused* (idk how else to word all this)

Other than that it would, in general, just spice things up A LOT which Ms UR Kob loves spice

**edit**

I don't mind rare outcomes in monthly litters every once in a while, but for me seeing a swap thread where 90% of comments are folks looking for the same one pet is not fun at all, and I dread being on the short end of the stick even more often. I would much rather have more pets with more diverse rarities in monthly litters, than have a single random rare slapped among them.

For example, let's just look at August and September releases - vast majority of pets are either very common or extremely common. You have just updated your rarity system - use it! Why not have more uncommon, very uncommon, extremely uncommon pets? It has plenty of benefits:
1) they wouldn't be as hard to trade for as a rare would, while keeping the feeling of getting a less common outcome,
2) if everything is very common then I really don't have an incentive to trade with others - I will rarely be missing more than 3-4 pets for an entire month, so my trading activity is small. But this would increase trading activity without demanding me to browse the swap thread for hours and speedruning sending trades,
3) the pets will become rare faster than a super common, so it will become a viable trade option for older pets sooner,
4) if you decide on a given month to also add a rare outcome on top of diverse rarities, it might also create a situation where the lucky owner may be more interested in trading his pet for the monthly uncommon pet(s) that he missed, rather than creating insane demand that boosts the prices beyond sanity.

Of course, this would have to be properly balanced with the amount of pets that players can obtain each month. But I do believe that there's a golden (ha ha, golden gacha dog) middle to find between satisfying the rare seekers and the casual players. Looking for a rare litter outcome can be tedious and frustrating, but it really doesn't have to be.

There's already over 10 years worth of challenges and goals for people who are interested in challenging themselves with trading hard to obtain pets.

Also, another thing I'm afraid of is that there's already lot of foul play on the forum from players who mass buy rare outcomes from unsuspecting players for massive underpay (sorry, "very fair price" of 1c$) for resale, and monthly rare outcomes will only further promote this behavior.

YES all of this LOL That's why a few times a year with uncommons/extremely uncommons sprinkled in like the ol' days would be pretty neat