Rule Changes to Address Misleading Trades +Spam Guide Update

[updog]

well in my opinion this kind of seems like it will cause more confusion than it's worth to casual players & traders alike? maybe if the site was still in it's early days this would all make more sense as a preventative measure but attempting to 'ban' guides from using terms that have been well established for awhile seems counter productive in regards to cutting back on scammers.

I can personally vouch that the MA/Non system is the ONLY thing that helped me learn how to trade after I discovered it last month. And I have been on the site for 13 years. It is a system well bolstered by years of trade data and demand tracking, and it simplifies something that there is not official guidance on.

okay yeah see i was thinking this too

[lizzybee]

I just want to say that this is almost exactly what I had suggested previously in the last ninja discussion thread I sw, and im SO happy to see it added as a rule now. Being able to pay 1ma and then flip for 10ma was something that I very much disliked. I know people are still finding reason to be upset, which is okay !! But I love seeing this change.thank you simon and the staff involved in this decision 🩷🩷

[lumikki]

can someone genuinely explain to me, like i'm 5,

how every single trading guide using different names/terms for values is meant to be LESS confusing and more welcoming to players (new AND old)? i feel like i'm going insane here

100% i feel the exact same!

[TANKMEN]

{ I'm ECSTATIC to see these terms finally going away when every guide and then every trader out there uses them to mean different things. with a change this big now maybe instead of 20 different trade guides everyone will put their heads together to make one solid set of values which will faster weed out scammers. I hope staff plans to bring the hammer down on known scammers with this change as well. ♡

I am as well just because nobody has been able to fully explain to me (or many other players I know) what a "mid advent" even is. People will always try to scam others, I feel like this will kind of start to help players who haven't been able to figure this player-made system out.

for the sake of transparency, ill do my best to explain what MA/Non mean. so others in the thread can be aware.

both of these terms come from the original 'Rares List', which was used from about 2009 to 2015~, when it was made defunct and replaced with Horror's guide, which used the same terminology, but based it on empirical trade data. the original Rares List was mostly a 'he said, she said' scenario, which is why it was discontinued. but the idea of 'MA' and 'Non' still have concepts in CS pets.

'MA' stands for 'Mid Advent' - this refers to the 'Mid Advent' dogs released during the first ever CS Advent, in 2008. In 2008, the large group of dogs (such as the pink cookie dog, brown border collie, desert pps, etc) were released multiple times as filler. they were re-releases of dogs that existed before CS became a forum with an account system, and was just a simple PHP adoptable site. these dogs are also sometimes called Pre-July Dogs, due to existing before that time. because they were released multiple times in that Advent, and were mostly equal in demand and worth, due to most players getting all of them (except for demand standouts like the Vixen), they became the basis for an average worth of a 'list' pet. the original Rares List was split into July, September, and Advent List. thus 'MA' became the denotion of a pet that existed on the Advent List, and was equivalent to those dogs.

'Non' stands for 'Non-tag', 'Non-balloon' and 'Non-Raccoon'. these are three dogs that were part of rarer litters that were deemed mostly equal to eachother, but not as rare as pets like the Sunjewel, Dogtag, Moonswirl, etc. these pets were around the middle of the July list, and so could be used to value pets higher than them, as well as subsequent Store pets and UR pets.

an additional term that got abandoned along the way is 'Sorb', which of course refers to the 4 Sorbets. at one time, they were believed to be of equal rarity, but now we know the Red Sorbet is a tiny bit rarer than its littermates. so the term fell out of fashion.

prior to Horror's list, these values were kind of nebulous, and confusing. somewhere along the way between Horror's list and now, a huge trading discussion among many traders agreed on this:

1 Non = 10 MA
1 MA = 10 Old Rare
0.1 MA = 1 Old Rare
an Old Rare being any '10 - '11 Rare with no specific demand or worth. previously, these were '09 - '10 rares, but most '09 rares are now considered 'specific'.

this was streamlined to generally make trading a lot easier, and has, in my opinion, been the best version of the MA/Non system thus far. these values have been open and transparent, listed on Horror's list as well as numerous other guides for years now. they have not been hidden or kept secret by any means. i hope this helps clarify things.

[DragonCave]

i'm sorry, but i really don't understand this. the reason that players scam other players is because pets have agreed on values by the community - this dog is worth 10 MA, etc. so they target newbies and unknowing players to get it for their gain. however, if a new player is able to get access to this same value system everyone is using early, they can avoid scams - you can see this clearly with the Trade Value Script, which has helped many many new players avoid ninja scams and players misleading them on values.

by obscuring this further and forcing every guide to use its own value system, you are making this even more confusing for new players. if they ask how much a pet is worth, theyre going to be given multiple different valueing systems, which may not match what the scammer is telling them. the scammer could then just say "no no, my value is the same as their value! trust me!" with no way to corroborate that.

i greatly support CS's efforts to prevent ninja trading and scamming, but i don't think this is it. rather than making this obvious scamming (esp on dec 18th) outright bannnable, or introducing local valueing systems on the site itself, you are making it more difficult for players to agree on trades and understand the value of pets. MA/Non didnt come from nothing, and you guys know that, it has existed as long as the site has. if the admins are insistent on killing MA/Non, then you NEED to introduce an in-house way to value pets above the OMGSR line, because currently there is not one. if you introduced this, or gave us explicit numbers for pets - something the admins have refused to do for over a decade (understandably!) - we would have no need for these systems.

please stop putting the burden of cataloging the games 15,000+ pets on the players and punishing them when that value system isnt to the admin's preference. at this point it really isn't fair, and its just frustrating. i dont know, maybe ill feel different about this in some months, but right now this announcement is just upsetting, especially without asking the playerbase if we even want this.

Still refusing to ban players who have mountains of evidence against them for unfair trading practices and just putting more burden on the players who go above and beyond for this community like Horror.

Huge agree on both on these. Banning these common terms is only going to make rarity/value even harder to discern, especially for the new players that CS is trying to protect with these rules. I don't think refusing to make an in-house value system while not allowing the most agreed-upon value system to be used is the right move here. Additionally: the current lists were made over a lonnng time with tons and tons of successful trades taken into account. If the player base is forced to make new lists, these new lists are either A) going to be near-carbon copies of Horror's list or b) going to vary wildly and be insanely unreliable and heavily subject to personal opinion. Lastly, nobody is being forced to use these lists. They're there for player benefit. Banning these is a ridiculously counterproductive move.

I can personally vouch that the MA/Non system is the ONLY thing that helped me learn how to trade after I discovered it last month. And I have been on the site for 13 years. It is a system well bolstered by years of trade data and demand tracking, and it simplifies something that there is not official guidance on.

This this this! Using these lists has been a massive help to so many, myself included. There have been plenty of times that I would have been absolutely ripped off/scammed had I not had these lists/value systems to refer to.

[theseus]

i feel like the trading scene is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
on one hand, an official trading guide would be iiincredibly helpful for everyone, but itd also feelllll.. a bit too hands-on? i like that cs's trading scene develops and changes with its players. having a firm, set in stone guide takes away a part of that. when the rares list was discontinued in 2019, it was for this exact reason--- the values listed on that guide were no longer accurate in comparison to each other after years of use. an official guide couldn't really adapt to popularity per pet/values exactly the way that the most-used guides now (horror's, popular items, etc) do.
however, the defining of non/MA/old rare has had its own problems. though theyre listed on horror's list (i think), it DEFINITELY fluctuates per person sometimes. is an old rare from 2008-2011, just 2010-2011? how do extremely/very rares translate to regular rares? if a pet worth 1 non is more popular, wont it go for more than a non? (ive had this experience with the UR holly dog, which, although its listed at 1.5 nons, is too "unpopular" to go for more than 1 non. this degrades the meaning of a non itself.)
really, i dont think getting rid of nons/mas/old rares will help much. i think firmer, stricter, unwavering definitions would help, but over time that'd change because thats how active trading is. personal values will always play a part no matter what the list is.

tldr this update probably wont help, maybe will lead to new lists/better updates, idek ive been trading for way too long on here.

[neapolitan]

i find this update incredibly silly. i'm not one to actively go against things, but all i see in this post is rule changes that will make the trading market confusing and divided, if not outright hostile. the list and the terms MA/non are well defined and are based on and actively updated with trade data from players over many many years. by changing these and banning the use of the terms for other guides / trade advice, it opens up even more opportinities for scammers / ninjas to make their own value lists and terms with no real evidence to back it (unlike horror's list!)

a much simpler update would be to enforce how people use these terms while trading (ie. specifying when you send a trade what you personally value each pet at and why), keep in mind reports of scams and ninja trades and judging based on common sense and not a strict rule system, because moderators are allowed to take action against things even if they aren't explicitly written in the rules, and this update just sounds like even more dancing around whether ninja trades should be against the rules or not, meaning people will have an even easier time finding methods that are "technically" legal. if a user is exploiting members on purpose, and a moderator agrees with that sentiment, they should have action taken against them accordingly.

and as a sidenote- MA and non are allowed to be used for personal values, but how would this work? if the terms are not allowed in any trading guides anymore, the terms would not hold any value at all, unless they're being used for a player that isn't aware of this being updated, such as old/returning users or new players trying to learn from older ones.

i'm overall hugely disappointed with this approach, and i hope it will be revised and either clarified or loosened a bit. please don't keep the trend of protecting the bad eggs of the community.

[sincerelyv]

i will say one thing: Horror's guide explains every bit of what MA and non means in the first half of the post. in detail. it definitely isn't made up and we all read it to understand it ourselves.

i've been here since 2009 off and on and I can say that Horror's Guide and the item guides are the closest we've come to putting a community-wide value on things beyond the rarity tags. I really feel very sorry for those who have to change stuff around in those guides and the script (that helps a lot of people NOT get scammed). I hope this doesn't make scamming/ninjaing easier while the confusion settles.

[raiden]

Additionally, in an effort to protect new users, we will be looking out for players who seem to be targeting new members to exploit their lack of knowledge. Anyone found trying to take advantage of them, particularly around our rereleases, may be subject to punishment.

Why weren't you doing this before? 🤨

To make this change as smooth as possible existing guide owners who currently use “MA”, “Non”, and "Old Rare" will be given a transition period to rename their units and update their explanations.

After the transition period, the new expectations will be enforced as part of the standard trading rules. Users / guide owners with questions about how to update guides or how to correctly reference values in trades are encouraged reach out for clarification!

Has a time for this transition period been decided? I realize this is mainly directed to the "owners" of value guides, but seeing as much of the site has adapted to a single common guide and it seems like you're encouraging more users to establish their own guides, I think it'd be helpful for all users in the trading scene to be made aware of when this grace period is over. Do we have 2 weeks? a month? 6 months?

[OopsAllPlagues]

I started playing CS in roughly 2013 then took a 12 year hiatus. I came back to an entire player created economy which is fantastic but it's been slightly confusing to learn all the different guides that people have created. The universal language of MA and Non have been the only thing that's made all the guides easier to understand. Banning now universal terms while providing no alternative and leaving everyone to their own devices is going to cause even more confusion in an already confusing system. While I appreciate that staff is trying to crack down on scammers, I don't think this decision will truly help in the long run.