Rarity system updated to add 4 new categories!

[riftclaw]

It's been a bit since the new rarities were implemented and I've been chewing on it a bit since...

I voted against adding a ton of new categories bc I was concerned that it would simply replicate "the list" in hard numbers, which is #1 the worst aspect of chickensmoothie trading. "List pet" presumed rarity has left me way too scared to ever trade most of my older pets, especially since I know it's always been based on user opinion/popularity vs actual rarity (i.e. people skipping adopting species they don't like, so less of them in circulation and thus actually rarer than dogs from the same time, but those species being consistently devalued for being a less popular species).

I think a lot of pets were probably rarer than people assumed bc of their personal likes and dislikes, and this is probably a more accurate system overall. I hope that when things calm down I'll be able to make decisions with less crippling anxiety over whether someone is actually trading fairly or not!

Quoting the below bc I agree a lot with these points:

Personally extremely happy about this change. User-based value systems like “the list” being the predominant way of trading was resulting in a lot of pets being undervalued based on a lack of demand and a lack of concrete information about how many were in circulation. This unblurs a lot of those lines a little, and to me it’s really satisfying.

Just gonna be 100% honest here, I just think that maybe… Just maybe, the gap between pets like the joker and the 09s and the Moonswirl was just never that large to begin this (and I say this as a Moonswirl owner)

[implodingescapade]

What does the custom rarity mean? Has the site done custom pets before?

[Tupfensplitter]

What does the custom rarity mean? Has the site done custom pets before?

here is a info post about custom pets.

[everlore]

Anyone know how I can make my groups in order now? Dx
10 and 11 are supposed to be at the end

You can add a * to the normal numbers

For example,

Keep: *1
Keep: *2
...
Keep: 10

Special characters always come first.

I have mine with decimal points!

[SolarSonnet]

It's been a bit since the new rarities were implemented and I've been chewing on it a bit since...

I voted against adding a ton of new categories bc I was concerned that it would simply replicate "the list" in hard numbers, which is #1 the worst aspect of chickensmoothie trading. "List pet" presumed rarity has left me way too scared to ever trade most of my older pets, especially since I know it's always been based on user opinion/popularity vs actual rarity (i.e. people skipping adopting species they don't like, so less of them in circulation and thus actually rarer than dogs from the same time, but those species being consistently devalued for being a less popular species).

I think a lot of pets were probably rarer than people assumed bc of their personal likes and dislikes, and this is probably a more accurate system overall. I hope that when things calm down I'll be able to make decisions with less crippling anxiety over whether someone is actually trading fairly or not!

Quoting the below bc I agree a lot with these points:

Personally extremely happy about this change. User-based value systems like “the list” being the predominant way of trading was resulting in a lot of pets being undervalued based on a lack of demand and a lack of concrete information about how many were in circulation. This unblurs a lot of those lines a little, and to me it’s really satisfying.

Just gonna be 100% honest here, I just think that maybe… Just maybe, the gap between pets like the joker and the 09s and the Moonswirl was just never that large to begin this (and I say this as a Moonswirl owner)

I voted for the extra rarities because I was hoping for the exact thing you were hoping against, and still feel like I haven't gotten it with this rarity update. I kind of hate how many pets fall into OMGSR and think we need more categorization and ranking in the rarer pets side than in the common pets side.

I think we could have an entire spectrum of OMGSC to OMGSR within the OMGSR rarity and people would still be a little bit reluctant to swap their OMGSRs. 1:1. Even if we had "Common OMGSRs", "Uncommon OMGSRs", etc. I think people would be like, "My Uncommon OMGSR is closer to Very Uncommon OMGSR than your Uncommon OMGSR is, so mine is worth more." even though there are super specific brackets for OMGSRs at that point that literally would make it extremely fair to 1:1 swap.

My ideal trading circumstance on CS is one where pets have solid value and the gap between rarities is small, so we have near-exact numbers of how many pets of each rarity are out there.

Until we have a graph with numbers from the staff, (I.E. X rarity being 1 in 100 accounts, Y being 1 in 1000 accounts, etc) I don't think I'll ever be quite satisfied with whatever trading rules end up being established as the new "norm".

The end goal would be where people are comfortable swapping 1:1 within each rarity, no matter what date that pet is, because the rarities are just so accurate that rarity maths is made redundant. Which basically means.. The more categories, the smaller pool between each rarity, the less guesswork of "How close is this pet to the next rarity bracket?" you have to do.

If a Very Rare was <1 in every 100 accounts, and a Rare was <1 in every 300 accounts, how do you know if your Rare is closer to one in every 299 accounts or one in every 101 accounts? There's a huge difference between those two and the 2:1 rule makes sense.

But if a Rare is 1 in every 300, and a VR is only 1 in every 250, suddenly it doesn't matter as much anymore and you only need slight add to bridge the gap between R and VR.

This information is super important to trading as a whole and I wish it were more transparent.

The list and hard numbers of value between pets is what I love the most about trading high-value pets on CS. My brain works best when things have numbers and solid values with them, even if those values aren't 100% accurate and are user-generated based on things like demand along with the technical worth of the pet. I don't mind rats being undervalued because they're "less desirable" and think that demand should play a huge role in how much people are willing to trade for a pet. Even if a pet's rarity says it should be worth 100 09 rares, if the majority of the playerbase agrees that it's ugly and nobody likes it, it is valued at a lot less than what it's worth, because nobody except the outliers of rat-lovers and diehard collectors actually want to trade for it or are willing to offer even a fraction of its "real worth".

[Schuyler]

Hi! I'm sure this has already been asked but there are way too many words for my simple brain. basically one question: is date factored into how the rarities were assigned? is a 2022 OMGSC worth the same as a 2014 OMGSC? I had the same question with the old rarity system, but I'm not sure if that was factored in or not, but regardless people valued older dates higher. Also! I have found that I have a lot of pets that are worth more than I thought they were? Example: Red X dog and the UR Kirin. Are they worth the same now? Or will they still go for different values? Now I feel like I need to relearn everything I know about rarity haha.

1) Short answer: Rarity is determined automatically and the only thing that is factored in is how many copies of each pet exist on active accounts. The system doesn't care about any other factors like species, demand, or adoption date. How users choose to take those into consideration when trading is up to them.

Longer answer: Date does affect rarity indirectly in that older pets are more likely to have fewer copies in circulation because fewer people were around to adopt them, and many have probably gone inactive, which is why people tend to value older pets more. But if, for example, "uncommon" means there's 1 copy of the pet for every 50-100 active users (probably not the actual numbers), then all pets that fall somewhere within that range will be uncommon. When they were adopted doesn't matter.

Older pets are more likely to be on the rarer end of their tier, but it's also entirely possible that from random chance, an older uncommon had an unusually high number of copies adopted and is more abundant than newer uncommons, or vice versa. So assuming that an older pet is rarer than a newer pet of the same rarity will not always be accurate.

This is how it's always been. All that's changed is that four new rarity levels have been added for more precision (extremely common, very uncommon, extremely uncommon, and extremely rare), the thresholds for the different levels have been adjusted to allow for a more even spread, and the criteria for when accounts are considered inactive has been adjusted as well.


2) As for the second question, well, value is extremely subjective so nobody can answer that for sure, especially right now when we're all new to the updated system and the economy hasn't had time to adjust.

Some people only care about rarity labels and value all pets that have the same rarity more or less equally; others are more concerned about differences within a tier and keep track of rarity changes or other factors to estimate which pets are rarer (eg. if pet A and pet B are both uncommon, but A has always been uncommon while B just moved up to uncommon recently, then A would be assumed to be rarer than B).

Ultimately it's a matter of individual preference how to perceive value beyond the rarity labels.

[Poserpanda]

This is the answer I was looking for as well. Thank you for explaining in detail what has happened to the rarity system. It looks like there's no way to be rid of demand and lists, but at least the way you've explained things makes the rarity system a bit more clear.

[ShadowKatto]

I have two things to say…

1. The all lowercase “OMG” in OMGSR and OMGSC is bothering me. It feels unenthusiastic
2. Why are people complaining about all the new OMGSRs? Obviously there’s a lot more people here now than in 2008-9, so certain pets are inevitably going to become rarer.

[Aquella]

Does anybody else still really struggle with the new labels? Like all the very and extremely somehow is not intuitive to me.

[riftclaw]

Even if a pet's rarity says it should be worth 100 09 rares, if the majority of the playerbase agrees that it's ugly and nobody likes it, it is valued at a lot less than what it's worth, because nobody except the outliers of rat-lovers and diehard collectors actually want to trade for it or are willing to offer even a fraction of its "real worth".

I think the thing we fundamentally disagree with is that i don't think any pet should be worth 100 rares. I think the site's user-run trading function has been so broken for so long people think it's normal to demand overpayment on stuff that probably isn't that rare overall, and the intentional obfuscation of lording the list over people scares a lot of people (including me, who owns a lot of older and desired things since my account's from 2008) away from touching trades at all. If you don't know the "value", and it's intentionally scattered around in the forums and none of it is actually hard data, how can you ever trust that someone offering you something is even worth what they claim?

The only people I can trust to be fair are my friends. That's a problem.