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

[TANKMEN]

-snip-
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.

thank you! i really do appreciate it. have a good night ❤

[Pallastronomy]

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.

This is very helpful info, thank you!

[Papilio Ulysses]

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").

Maybe something like: "Striped Rat = 0.5H + 1.5PV" (Where PV stands specifically for Personal Value). This way, we can see both the guide value is separate from added personal value.

And what about when someone values a pet less than than Horror's guide? Would: "Striped Rat = 0.5H - 0.25PV" work? Though perhaps the negative sign could be misinterpreted as a regular dash instead...

I find that stating the guide value and personal value as one sum is part of what makes it ambiguous in a pet name, where of course you don't have enough space to explain it.

[Mouse 13]

As for how to name pets per personal value, while using guide values something like "1.5H + 0.5H add" or "10H, +5H overpay (15H)" seem clear enough to me.
Avoiding guide units, it could just be 2011-2012 rares. For example "120 '11/'12 rares"
Or simply list a C$ value and say in your trade rules you accept pet trades equalling the C$ value. You could also specify, then, rare+ only etc.

[Rubylollypop]

Maybe something like: "Striped Rat = 0.5H + 1.5PV" (Where PV stands specifically for Personal Value). This way, we can see both the guide value is separate from added personal value.

And what about when someone values a pet less than than Horror's guide? Would: "Striped Rat = 0.5H - 0.25PV" work? Though perhaps the negative sign could be misinterpreted as a regular dash instead...

I find that stating the guide value and personal value as one sum is part of what makes it ambiguous in a pet name, where of course you don't have enough space to explain it.

As for how to name pets per personal value, while using guide values something like "1.5H + 0.5H add" or "10H, +5H overpay (15H)" seem clear enough to me.
Avoiding guide units, it could just be 2011-2012 rares. For example "120 '11/'12 rares"
Or simply list a C$ value and say in your trade rules you accept pet trades equalling the C$ value. You could also specify, then, rare+ only etc.

I love these ideas, I think they could totally help well intentioned traders make things more clear! Hopefully something can be looked at to prevent players who are not well intentioned (scammers) from using these grey areas in terminology & specifics of how the new rules work to their advantage (as this seems to be exactly what the staff was initially trying to avoid with this rule change).

I guess we will see what additional information is provided over the coming weeks. Hopefully everything comes together in the end to make a positive impact on the site.

[bugbaby]

Snip

That's usually the nature of lists, and why some users, like myself, will usually go off of recently completed trades of those pets *before* looking to a list. The very old retro rares list had the same problem of waiting for the community to vote on a new value, taking too long to update and help people currently trading off those pets for the more accurate market value. Lists like this will always have that problem.

My main concern I feel, is that people may be hesitant to share or communicate their recent trades now given this update. It's really thrown a spanner in the works for traders like me who also try and watch pet prices change as they happen to shift.

I have no issues with horror's list or any other kinds of lists being imperfect in nature, they're user run and operate off of only a subset of CS's trade data, despite my personal frustrations with item lists in particular. This only adds to my point, however, that this new rule change clamps down on the wiggle room and freedom people used in combination with these lists to accurately represent what pets actually trade for in real time.

[long, moderately unrelated response incoming, my apologies]

This was a practice that could be abused, sure, but in my experience it was really obvious to me when people were hiking up the values of their pets not just to accommodate demand spikes, or with personally favored pets/designs/sentimental pets wanting extra just because.

I think a better use of limited mod time and availability on behalf of CS would be to just warn/suspend/ban users who were clearly abusing this old strategy without changing trading for everyone else. I can't imagine the work that is going to be taken out in the years to come to switch from almost 2 decades of relatively hands-off trading moderation (except in cases automatically flagged by the site for hacking accounts, transferring pets between similar IPs, super blatant scams, etc.) to investigating minute details between random CS users because 1 user was 25% off the listed Horror's guide value on a trade involving a handful of old VRs and forgot to include a disclaimer that they just personally value bunnies lower, lions higher, cats higher, or so on.

Already tons of minor technicalities against CS rules go unnoticed because mods are unpaid volunteers - this is not how they make a living, and shouldn't command an equivalent amount of time - and either attend to mainly player reports or the most obvious cases of site-rule-breaking. Even from reading this thread I don't think the staff responding 100% agree on what the margins for list deviation are, how this will be enforced, what terminology is appropriate and when, and so on. I support the rules making a stance against ninja trading but that's about it

[martyy]

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.

YES. This is the issue a lot of us have with this update but it isn't being listened to because the small minority of intense traders are speaking the loudest. Most players are just going to be more confused by this update and struggle even more to understand what everyone's talking about in trading. 500 new terms are going to arise out of this and everyone will be talking about pet value in their own ways, and even right now you have to scour multi-page threads to find answers to questions. This rule just seems far too convoluted for something that's not going to fix scamming to even the smallest extent. It feels like such an unnecessary shake up.

Idk, maybe I'm too stupid to understand the niche complexities of the chicken smoothie economy. But if that's so for an adult, I can not imagine how this change and confusion will aid new young traders who don't know anything about the economy in the first place. They will just continue to get scammed anyway.

I don't think this change is going to destroy chicken smoothie or anything, but I can not see the point. No matter how many explanations I've read it really just seems futile. There are much better options, like better in-game rarity systems (although that's a big ask and probably not possible, I understand), better trade help on offer/encouraging new players to look at trade threads before trading, maybe some sort of introductory guide to trading/rarity and value when you join the site. Idk, anything other than banning some words.

[BlueEyedKite]

I think some important info is being skipped over. I will bold it.

Moving forward after this update, we will punish users who are obviously targeting inexperienced users with ninja trades (Ninja trading is when someone offers pets of a lower rarity, usually in bulk, in exchange for a pet that is likely to grow into a higher rarity outcome, without pointing out that difference and relying on the trading partner’s lack of knowledge). Yes, this includes trades sent with no message or just a message saying something like "Are you okay with this". We will use our discretion and judgment when making these calls and take into account the user's trade history and other factors that would help inform us of malicious intent.

My takeaway is that ninja scammers don't need to be caught by misrepresenting a trading guide. Because staff are saying they can still punish a malicious trader if they say nothing at all in the trade message! It's very obvious when someone is a ninja trader. They make it their day job. They send horrible trades all day long especially around 12/18. I'm sure knowing staff will look back at their trade history is a HUGE deterrent lol

[Birdy]

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.

Thanks for your response and for clearing that up! That makes a lot of sense c:

[Simon]

-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!

Hi TANKMEN,

Again just want to make clear we understand there will be a little bit of an awkward period where everyone settles into the new normal so as long as we can tell you are making an effort to express that you are trading with personal values, you should be okay. Trade messages have more room for detailed explanations, so when possible they should be utilized to explain how you value pets. However, we totally understand your point that a lot of users price their pets through pet names. In that case, using abbreviations should be okay.

Something like PV (personal value) and OP (overpay) might work

For example - Pet name: "PV 1.5H, OP .5H" to express you personally value your pet as 1.5H which is .5H more than what it is listed for on Horror's guide, (disclaimer: we aren't saying you must name your pets this way, this is just an example I imagine could work)

I expect that with time the community will come to a general consensus on abbreviations that everyone will universally understand, but for now it would be important to explain your abbreviations in your pet group name and or your trade rules so everyone can easily interpret your pet names.

tldr; abbreviations to express personal values are okay, just add a key or explanation in an easy place to find so users know how to interpret them