Roll Back the Bans on MA/Non as Trading Guide Units [550+]

[TANKMEN]

wait, is there another thread I don't know of? where are they saying Horror will remove the conversion rate?? /gen

i apologize, i was very sure that in the announcement thread Winx or another staff member said that after the initial transition period, Horror would have to remove the "1 MA = 1 H" statement on the thread. but since i can't search the announcement thread, i cant find this 😅 since i cant find it, you can disregard that i said it. apologies

[-icarus-]

i apologize, i was very sure that in the announcement thread Winx or another staff member said that after the initial transition period, Horror would have to remove the "1 MA = 1 H" statement on the thread. but since i can't search the announcement thread, i cant find this 😅 since i cant find it, you can disregard that i said it. apologies

you're good! I'm just anxious about this and want to know everything so I have the tools to adjust :3

[Thovatos]

snip

On this note, it's worth mentioning (I'm recalling on very old memories here, so please bare with me) that there was a *lot* of banter back in the day about outlier trades and actual pet values. Not always, but on some more divisive pets like store or high-demand pets, the arguments typically boiled down to two sides:

"Value pushers are pushing up the values to increase the worth of their pets"
vs
"These successful trades prove people will pay this much for these pets"

At the end of the day, I agree with you. People can come together as a collective and decide a pet (for example) is worth 10H, but if there are quite a few examples of people willing and ready to offer 11-13H, I don't think it does newer users justice by not listing pets off these values. Your post here sums it up perfectly.

here's an example: recently i was struggling to find the Heart Swirl PPS. it's officially "only" 1 MA, but its one of the most highly sought after of the Mid Advent dogs, and its very hard to find it in a trading group. when i did, i traded about 1.3 MA for it, and i documented this trade on the successful trade thread since theres not many examples of this particular pet on that thread. most trades i was sending/receiving were expecting a lot more than that, upwards of 2 MA in some cases.

when i recently had a TD Shima Longtail up for trade, i wanted no less than 4-5 MA for it, because that is what it goes for. i am shooting myself in the foot if i did otherwise, and i wouldn't expect anyone else to do any different. this is "value pushing" to some people, but was what people were actually trading for this pet.

Edited in: If a more experienced trader knows they can easily get 13H's for this pet, they will trade the cited 10H in the guide and happily upsell for 13H's.

Not enough people are considering this. I find some of these changes might incline users to take guide as 'hard-fast' rules even if multiple guides exist. I know H's themselves aren't supposed to be exactly hard values, but in the trading scene today, it certainly feels like it! We need more modern trade data! And again, I feel like the current rule-set discourages users from sharing their data. In the end, the more data we have, the easier it will be to update guides faster.

Edit 2: Fixed some typing where does was used instead of dosen't! I apologize~

[Birdy]

there is quite literally no point in even making a new guide, and in fact ive heard that when they pop up on the board they get taken down because no one cares to have anything to do with them. we already have the most comprehensive, living guide ever written that directly reflects the community's attitudes on pet demand.

Just curious, can a staff member confirm if this is true? Are they taken down as in the owner of the thread asks for it to be taken down due to inactivity/lack of interest in the community, or are they taken down as in staff shut it down? Kind of off topic I guess, but this comment caught my attention and I'd love some clarification!

[Thovatos]

there is quite literally no point in even making a new guide, and in fact ive heard that when they pop up on the board they get taken down because no one cares to have anything to do with them. we already have the most comprehensive, living guide ever written that directly reflects the community's attitudes on pet demand.

Just curious, can a staff member confirm if this is true? Are they taken down as in the owner of the thread asks for it to be taken down due to inactivity/lack of interest in the community, or are they taken down as in staff shut it down? Kind of off topic I guess, but this comment caught my attention and I'd love some clarification!

I'd second a reply on this too. I'd make one just so people would know where my own values are placed, but I've often wondered if it was worth going out of my way to, if it would just be shut down.

[Pallastronomy]

there is quite literally no point in even making a new guide, and in fact ive heard that when they pop up on the board they get taken down because no one cares to have anything to do with them. we already have the most comprehensive, living guide ever written that directly reflects the community's attitudes on pet demand.

Just curious, can a staff member confirm if this is true? Are they taken down as in the owner of the thread asks for it to be taken down due to inactivity/lack of interest in the community, or are they taken down as in staff shut it down? Kind of off topic I guess, but this comment caught my attention and I'd love some clarification!

Not staff, but I did see one guide thread either get taken down or moved (Unsure which, when trying to revisit I was told it was in a forum I didn't have permission to access), but at the same time I can understand why it was. It was clearly jokey/non-serious in nature in stating that "as users following this guide we agree that all pets have the same value" and some people were tagging along with it to be silly but given it clearly wasn't intended as a serious guide while being in the genuine trading advice thread I can see why they took it down if it was staff who did so. I would be curious to hear a staff reply if this has happened to any genuine attempts at guides though, be it if the guide was taken down voluntarily or because it was breaking a rule of some kind

[Rubylollypop]

i wanted to bring this up since i saw the QNA and the above posts regarding it. are you able to give us a solution for conveying this "1.5H" in pet names, while also conveying it as a personal value, without using MA?

Horror is one person and is not constantly taking in every single trade made, even every trade made publicly available, and I'm sure they have things going on in their personal life that demand more attention and importance than CS. This is of course perfectly reasonable but with this new rule there is something to be said for people valuing pets at what they actually fetch compared to a value in text on Horror's guide. Horror's guide is retroactively updated and tends to "lag" behind demand spikes for certain pets.

Both of these points tie into things that I've been thinking about a lot with this new rule change.

Staff have stated that if you use a guide-specific unit (like "H") you should be following the values outlined in that guide, and that if you don't agree with a guide value/you want overpay you should either:

A) Not use the guide units for that pet, and use a different unit to value that pet (such as MA/NON),

or B) Very clearly explain that the guide you follow values the pet at X amount, but you want overpay of a higher amount (as mentioned by TANKMEN, no examples have been provided by staff of how this can be effectively communicated in pet names).

I see option A as somewhat of an issue because it means that we will almost certainly still see MA/NON being used as value units to some extent, which in my opinion makes things much more confusing for people who were already struggling to grasp one set of terms, let alone throwing a new/separate one in the mix. It also seems likely that the terms MA/NON will become even less concrete in their meaning/value because they are no longer the universally used unit, making it even easier for scammers to use them in bad faith (sure, experienced traders will know to more closely double-check values when someone is using MA/NON after this update, but inexperienced ones WONT, and THOSE are the people that we want to protect with this update).

Option B could also cause confusion if we do not have some kind of OFFICIAL abbreviation to add to pet names to indicate you are deviating from the guide. For example, lets say a lot of people (unoffically) start using PV (Example: "Striped Rat 2H *PV*") to show "personal value", and it becomes pretty widely known that a lot of people use that as an abbreviation. Scammers can then purposely use other abbreviations or "indicators" that people will not notice or recognize, and then when reported they can claim the value deviation was indicated in the pet name and that it's not their fault their trade partner did not understand or ask about it (For example, naming a pet: "Spotted Rat D 10H", and then claiming that "D" stands for "deviation from guide").

Additionally, I have also been pretty confused/concerned about the fact that staff have ALSO stated that you don't HAVE to follow guides 100% and that there can be some level of deviation, but the acceptable level of deviation will be determined by guide creators. I have a lot of questions about these statements that I feel I cannot even articulate properly, but I'll start with quoting Horror directly from their update/announcement post on the guide in regards to the new changes:

I'm aware that things need room to naturally change and grow; & there also needs to be room for different values which are still considered reasonable within most of the community,
⭐ You're still allowed some deviation as long as you aren't deemed abusing the system ⭐
(or overly unreasonable)

Strictly defined limits aren't being mentioned, both to protect trading & let it stay fluid, and to protect players by preventing anyone from exploiting limits when they're visibly written down. I had to ask the staff team to about the specifics to address this portion; but in simplest terms, guide owners get discretion. There'll be a fancier rule thing about it for the front page (as mostly a formality) but since I'm here I'll say it plain; I don't particularly care beyond site-rule-change-inspiring problems or maybe ungodly levels of demand pushing if they ever come up

(Please note that none of the following or prior statements are targeted at Horror at all, they are truly doing so much hard work for everyone, this is just about the new rules in general)

So.....we should follow the guide if we are using "H", buuuuut I mean you can also bend the values and NOT stick to the guide as long as it's reasonable, but we won't disclose what is reasonable and what isn't....sorry, what? While I DO understand the logic behind not disclosing specific limits, I also personally feel like this COMPLETELY destroys almost the whole point of this rule change. Staff don't want guides to use MA/NON anymore because it's not concrete enough and scammers are using it to mislead people into thinking you're following guide-specific values, but now we don't have to follow guide-specific values with "H" either?? Sure, you might say "well staff can determine if it's in bad faith or not depending on how big the value difference is, the circumstances, past trade patterns, etc, but that's pretty much exactly where we were before, and apparently it wasn't concrete enough evidence to ban prolific, infamous scammers.

Maybe I just don't understand, maybe there is more information that we haven't been made privy to yet, I don't know. I do understand the specific issue that was being tackled with this rule change, I just have concerns that there's going to be new issues created with very little gain. I truly hope I'm wrong as it seems there is no intention to rollback or significantly alter this new rule.

(Also, final side note, I hope this comment does not come off as attacking or rude as that is not my intent, this stuff has just been bouncing around in my head for days now) -edits made for typos/tweaks

[Celozon]

there is quite literally no point in even making a new guide, and in fact ive heard that when they pop up on the board they get taken down because no one cares to have anything to do with them. we already have the most comprehensive, living guide ever written that directly reflects the community's attitudes on pet demand.

Just curious, can a staff member confirm if this is true? Are they taken down as in the owner of the thread asks for it to be taken down due to inactivity/lack of interest in the community, or are they taken down as in staff shut it down? Kind of off topic I guess, but this comment caught my attention and I'd love some clarification!

Not staff, but I did see one guide thread either get taken down or moved (Unsure which, when trying to revisit I was told it was in a forum I didn't have permission to access), but at the same time I can understand why it was. It was clearly jokey/non-serious in nature in stating that "as users following this guide we agree that all pets have the same value" and some people were tagging along with it to be silly but given it clearly wasn't intended as a serious guide while being in the genuine trading advice thread I can see why they took it down if it was staff who did so. I would be curious to hear a staff reply if this has happened to any genuine attempts at guides though, be it if the guide was taken down voluntarily or because it was breaking a rule of some kind

I helped make the guidelines for the Trading Guide board so figured I'd answer. In order for a guide to be considered complete enough to belong in the Trade Guide board it has to be at least 50% completed, meaning of everything the guide is intended to include in its final state, such as a list of values, etc, at least 50% of that should be done before it goes in that board. The reason for this is just so that the guide board is not filled with a bunch of guides that are still in the very early stages and not usable to the regular user who is there looking for a guide to be able to use right now. Any guides that don't meet that criteria yet, or really any thread that doesn't meet the specific types of threads the board is intended for (list here), will almost always belong in CS Discussion instead, if they are later updated to meet the requirements they can then be moved into the Trading Guide board. The board is essentially an off-shoot of CS Discussions, thats where all the guide threads were previously, its just meant to collect the most helpful threads for trading so they are in an easy to find place. So if you do see a thread disappears from there its more likely just that it didn't meet the requirements and got put in CS Discussions. Though yeah, joke threads in general are usually just locked or removed from view.

[kitandangel]

I dunno, this whole thing just feels really confusing and frustrating for me...

I'm someone who DID NOT use MA/Non values and DOES NOT understand them, but I feel even MORE confused now. I'm not trying to be antagonistic, and I fully recognize that I may just not be understanding and that this change just may not apply to me in any way, but I just wanted to get my feelings out there.

Just wanted to share my opinions as someone who has been trading on CS for an extremely long time, but also who isn't an "experienced trader" per se, like I'm not a new user by ANY means but I also have never based things off of specific values or guides anyhow.

[winx]

-snip-
If you don’t want to write all of that out each time, you could also fall back to MAs and say something like “I value this pet at 1.5 MA.” Since MA won’t be tied to a specific guide anymore, users will likely start to recognize that as a personal value. It will still have a frame of reference for some time I think through all the data collected on the successful trades thread and the “1H = 1MA” conversion. Of course, it may take some time for that shift to happen, so we’ll have to see how it develops.

hi again,

i wanted to bring this up since i saw the QNA and the above posts regarding it. are you able to give us a solution for conveying this "1.5H" in pet names, while also conveying it as a personal value, without using MA?

this is my last and final sticking point regarding the whole thing. i feel this ruling is ignoring the extremely abundant practice of putting your asking price for a pet in its name, due to the lack of pet descriptions, group descriptions, trade labels, etc. or anything else that better conveys what you want for a pet within the trade window itself (thus no threads or PMs). most people who send me trades for my list pets dont actually ever read my trade thread, so the pet name is all i have to convey this idea as described previously.

if there could be an agreed upon or atleast staff supported way to convey this idea in names, then i would appreciate to hear it. whether thats some sort of acronym or shorthand (Personal, Prs, Own, etc) or a symbol (An asterisk, such as 1.5H*).

the lack of using MA is crucial, for a multitude of reasons already previously described. thank you for any response.

sorry to bump this, but i still have not received a concrete solid answer on this across two threads and several times asking. considering we are being told we may be punished if we name pets against the rules, this really needs clarification and a solution provided. if any staff can give an answer, i would really appreciate it. thanks!

I don’t want to speak on behalf of the entire staff team to convey a “staff supported way” since I’m just one moderator, and I’d rather make sure any answer reflects a broader consensus. I’ve linked your question in our staff chat so others can weigh in and we can get you a clearer response.