COMMUNITY POLL: Rare Monthly Pets

[Gamezelle]

As a recurring player who stopped trying very hard to trade a few months ago, I would be more interested in new "Special releases" like the zebras in horse litters.

My issue with rare or under pets in monthly litters is that they're impossible to trade for when they shouldn't be. Even if a pet ends up uncommon, it's dozens and dozens of people spamming auctions, abhorrent prices and whatnot to get them (look at the banner pets in every event, or the PPS lions/dragons whenever one comes out).

With "Special Release" , you know you have the possibility of getting something unique AND you know it's "valuable" for sure, so it's expected to be hard to obtain.

Then again, I'm not one of the most active players out there , and other people made really interesting points about the benefits of rare outcomes !

[Lady_Lycana]

It would be nice to see more rare or very rare monthly releases. I love the August pps and would like to see more releases like that one.

[softpaw]

with this poll being over, will be get any official announcements on any changes staff plans to implement going forward? o: or will we just have to wait and see? super excited to find out regardless!

[bark]

with this poll being over, will be get any official announcements on any changes staff plans to implement going forward? o: or will we just have to wait and see? super excited to find out regardless!

It would be cool to have some sort of announcement, or have staff announce when a month is going to have a rare outcome? That way we don't panic every month xD

[softpaw]

with this poll being over, will be get any official announcements on any changes staff plans to implement going forward? o: or will we just have to wait and see? super excited to find out regardless!

It would be cool to have some sort of announcement, or have staff announce when a month is going to have a rare outcome? That way we don't panic every month xD

that would be nice! haha i dont need that necessarily though (i think the surprise is more fun!) i'm just curious if we should assume the winning option in this poll is what to expect going forward! (a few litters a year that have a significantly harder to achieve outcome)

[odin]

TBH, I'm curious as to how it'd help newbies (per the main post). Once pets start growing and one outcome seems rarer, people will flock to the newbies and just ninja them out of the nice rare pet they adopted.

[cynicalstella]

I think this post (page 33)

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.

and this post (page 34)

Why should CS incentivize players to play the game minimally/irregularly? I understand that you are an inactive player, and personally I don't think the website should support that behavior. From a business standpoint, CS makes money from advertisements and from C$ purchases. If you are not playing regularly or purchasing CS, I personally don't think you should get the same experience of the game that regular players do.

I don't mean to be harsh, but the reality is that CS current rarity model incentivizes players to discontinue playing for long periods of time. This is (imo) an unsustainable business model. The bottom of the forum indicates that the last population "boost" on CS was in 2017. I remember that number increasing every single year. Anyways, the current model seems like it's;

1. Monthly litters are boring and valueless, no reason to play. Can come back after months and mass trade for missed outcomes easily.
2. Big events only 4 times of the year, the rest of the time players are gone.
3. You buy or trade for store pets, stop playing CS for those months-long breaks, and your pets/account has gained value.

I think CS should aim to make the game more accessible and exciting for players in order to retain and gain more players on the site. I don't think the 4 event, store pets, useless monthlies model is working :( its not for me anyways.

both do a really good job explaining not only my personal thoughts, but why changes are needed to the monthly pet adoptions. as Animall said, they are kinda boring if you're not super involved (which I'll be honest, I'm not most of the time; I'm currently riding the Halloween adrenaline wave, but I’m not active at all between events). and as kewin said, the monthlies are usually the same boring rarity (commons range), which takes forever to reach rare status, bringing in Animall's point that this "incentivizes players to discontinue playing for long periods of time." i know the poll is closed, but i wanted to bump these two posts since i feel like they're great additions to the conversation and work really well together.

[Liliette]

TBH, I'm curious as to how it'd help newbies (per the main post). Once pets start growing and one outcome seems rarer, people will flock to the newbies and just ninja them out of the nice rare pet they adopted.

It would help newbies…by giving them rare pets early onto playing cs instead of waiting for an event. You can’t ninja a new monthly growing pet that nobody knows the rarity of until a month/after it’s fully grown. People think a certain pet “seems rarer” and it turns out it’s just as common, that’s not a reliable source. To my understanding ninjaing is basically sending an overpay trade and hoping they accept. Whether that be because they don’t care about fairness, value designs more, are willing to overpay, or don’t know whatever CS calculus is going on rn. What pet would they be trading in exchange to ninja someone? It would have to be an older pet….so that would be a fair trade right?

Aside from having numerous places to get advice (fair trade thread, how much is this pets worth, how much is this pet worth in C$, etc) and a huge disclaimer on December 18, I don’t think there is anything else that can be done about helping people learn about their pet. Tess/Nick already said they wouldn’t release pet numbers even though this would be the most accurate way to figure out fairness/make an accurate list. Coming back after being gone for so long was so weird, we’ve got a bazillion new pet rarities and a lot of pets went omgsr that I never would’ve expected. The list was discontinued…except so many people still latch onto it. Rarity is important, but also something so subjective as demand that can fluctuate depending on time. A grinner is omgsr but a raven dog that’s less in rarity is still going for idk how many nons. it’s confusing how this is seen as ok, but other scenarios are not. “Ninja” and “overpaying” are two sides of the same coin.

Anyways people are gonna trade how they want, and having fear that a newbie may trade their rare away seems like a lame excuse to not release more rare monthly pets.

[odin]

TBH, I'm curious as to how it'd help newbies (per the main post). Once pets start growing and one outcome seems rarer, people will flock to the newbies and just ninja them out of the nice rare pet they adopted.

It would help newbies…by giving them rare pets early onto playing cs instead of waiting for an event. You can’t ninja a new monthly growing pet that nobody knows the rarity of until a month/after it’s fully grown. People think a certain pet “seems rarer” and it turns out it’s just as common, that’s not a reliable source. To my understanding ninjaing is basically sending an overpay trade and hoping they accept. Whether that be because they don’t care about fairness, value designs more, are willing to overpay, or don’t know whatever CS calculus is going on rn. What pet would they be trading in exchange to ninja someone? It would have to be an older pet….so that would be a fair trade right?

Aside from having numerous places to get advice (fair trade thread, how much is this pets worth, how much is this pet worth in C$, etc) and a huge disclaimer on December 18, I don’t think there is anything else that can be done about helping people learn about their pet. Tess/Nick already said they wouldn’t release pet numbers even though this would be the most accurate way to figure out fairness/make an accurate list. Coming back after being gone for so long was so weird, we’ve got a bazillion new pet rarities and a lot of pets went omgsr that I never would’ve expected. The list was discontinued…except so many people still latch onto it. Rarity is important, but also something so subjective as demand that can fluctuate depending on time. A grinner is omgsr but a raven dog that’s less in rarity is still going for idk how many nons. it’s confusing how this is seen as ok, but other scenarios are not. “Ninja” and “overpaying” are two sides of the same coin.

Anyways people are gonna trade how they want, and having fear that a newbie may trade their rare away seems like a lame excuse to not release more rare monthly pets.

I mean, it's supposed to help them and it definitely won't because they will probably trade it for just another no rarity outcome from the same month, or just a bunch of common or less, if they have a wl. Many people when they first join and don't have a concept of rarity will accept a trade with more pets offered than what you want. And I don't see how me, wanting newbies to actually not get scammed out of their rare pets is lame? But, go off.

[Thovatos]

TBH, I'm curious as to how it'd help newbies (per the main post). Once pets start growing and one outcome seems rarer, people will flock to the newbies and just ninja them out of the nice rare pet they adopted.

It would help newbies…by giving them rare pets early onto playing cs instead of waiting for an event. You can’t ninja a new monthly growing pet that nobody knows the rarity of until a month/after it’s fully grown. People think a certain pet “seems rarer” and it turns out it’s just as common, that’s not a reliable source. To my understanding ninjaing is basically sending an overpay trade and hoping they accept. Whether that be because they don’t care about fairness, value designs more, are willing to overpay, or don’t know whatever CS calculus is going on rn. What pet would they be trading in exchange to ninja someone? It would have to be an older pet….so that would be a fair trade right?

Aside from having numerous places to get advice (fair trade thread, how much is this pets worth, how much is this pet worth in C$, etc) and a huge disclaimer on December 18, I don’t think there is anything else that can be done about helping people learn about their pet. Tess/Nick already said they wouldn’t release pet numbers even though this would be the most accurate way to figure out fairness/make an accurate list. Coming back after being gone for so long was so weird, we’ve got a bazillion new pet rarities and a lot of pets went omgsr that I never would’ve expected. The list was discontinued…except so many people still latch onto it. Rarity is important, but also something so subjective as demand that can fluctuate depending on time. A grinner is omgsr but a raven dog that’s less in rarity is still going for idk how many nons. it’s confusing how this is seen as ok, but other scenarios are not. “Ninja” and “overpaying” are two sides of the same coin.

Anyways people are gonna trade how they want, and having fear that a newbie may trade their rare away seems like a lame excuse to not release more rare monthly pets.

I mean, it's supposed to help them and it definitely won't because they will probably trade it for just another no rarity outcome from the same month, or just a bunch of common or less, if they have a wl. Many people when they first join and don't have a concept of rarity will accept a trade with more pets offered than what you want. And I don't see how me, wanting newbies to actually not get scammed out of their rare pets is lame? But, go off.

I get both sides of the argument, really. I think many people have experienced some sort of ninja trades back when they were newer. I had something similar happen to me when the IR peach was released. But at the end of the day, people will always send unfair trades, and people will always be new enough to not know any better or don't really care about rarity enough to worry about what they are trading off. That's one thing I do like about the recent tag changes, because it helps illustrate rarity a bit more clearly for those newer to the game.
As some have said before me, rarities don't really release until the end of the month, so it's really only speculation if a certain outcome is rarer than the others or not. Most people don't even trade their growing outcomes until their rarity is given at the end of the month. So that's a little bit of a cushion on the whole ninja aspect.
But as far as I've seen, unless you're really really really new, most people within their first week come to find out about the "Is this a fair trade thread" and ask there. I really don't think it's as big of a worry as some might feel the ninja'ing is.
Personally I think the pros outweigh the cons. Gives a lot of long-standing players something to trade and engage for more than just simply adopting this months outcomes and going afk until the next month. We need something to do between events, and this would be a very welcome change!