I’ll add my own (belated) 2 cents as a casual player who no longer has the time a younger/school-aged me used to have. Take it with as much salt as your sodium intake can handle.
TL;DR: There’s a middle ground out there… Probably. Somewhere between “yay, complete rarity overhaul!” and “what’s the point of splitting untradeable Commons into more untradeable Commons?”.
Most of the arguments for adding 4 new rarities (barring the obligatory tongue-in-cheek Gotta Label ‘em All!) are for improving trading literacy. As in, more labels = more clarity = easier to tell the distinction between an ‘09 rare and a ‘19 rare. While this would definitely help with newer/less trading active users, especially on Dec 18th rereleases (although I believe they’ve recently added a looot of warnings around that date), like a lot of people have correctly pointed out, the underlying problem is the trading culture itself. I’m definitely not the first to say that it’s confusing, and I definitely won’t be the last to say that it’s unfair. Supply and demand, etc. etc., especially with “cooler”/more sparkledog (please don’t misunderstand me, I say this in the most loving way — natural colorations are just as amazing as those that alter the lineart, and everything outside and inbetween <3) designs. Let’s not even pretend that common phobias (rodents, spiders, snakes) aren’t paradoxically more and less sought after compared to fluffier animals (cats, dogs, foxes) by sheer “cuteness” factor (is this a bad place for me to name drop the halo effect?) (Actually, I’m still confused why horses aren’t as well-liked as they are IRL).
I picked option 2, adding a new VUC, but option 1’s rarity redistribution would also be fine. Actually, so would option 3, adding 4 new rarities! I understand that, no matter what, *something* is going to be different. My question is… what’s wrong with having so many Commons and Uncommons? For something to be rare, there has to be comparatively less of them, ie, commons. Yes, again, there’s the seemingly arbitrary “rules” that make it very frustrating to do 3 month swaps, or same month swaps, or even same litter swaps. And, yes, I know that by “pulling down” the rarities mean that “high” rares will bump up a level while “low” rares will stay where they are. Then there’s the sunk cost fallacy (or, if you want to feel very negative today, crabs in a bucket), that, since I paid for X at a price of Y, the cost for X should be at or greater than Y, even if a pet doesn’t “appear” to be more “worth” than another pet of the same rarity. If we keep the current distribution, then this problem will continue to exist. If we adjust the distribution, it will make some people happier, and others angrier. If we add rarities… the reaction, I’m certain, will likely be equivalent to however many categories are added :p
I mean, we currently have 7 rarities. Now we could have 8, or more voted for, 11. At what point do we think, yeah, that’s clear enough for most players, and at what point do we start calculating trade ups in terms of fractions of a pet? (Then again, isn’t that kinda how the whole, 0.25 NON/MA argument became so heated…?) After all, there *is* such a thing as too much choice. (The paradox of choice~! … OK, sorry, that’s enough tangential lingo.) Are we adding more labels for the sake of making trading easier, or for the sake of adding stars, bells, stripes, whistles, dinosaurs, and whatnot? I’m all for clarity, but there’s a reason why we invented money, and it’s not because you can’t barter two pigs for a lamb anymore. Demand is in the eye of the beholder. That is… pretty much what the official CS Help section says. Oh, and to ask other users for their help/opinion if you’re unsure, which definitely implies that we’re not supposed to have things so set in stone. Claaaassic CS Trading Culture^TM. So, I say: The
numbers rarities, Mason! What do they mean?!
If the problem is more of perception (again, as in it “seems” like a pet should be rarer because of a user created so-and-so), then renaming the rarities might help. You’ve likely already seen @Feather <3’s whimsical suggestion. Now, most, if not all, gacha games use a system of R/SR/SSR/SSSR or some variant with ‘+’s and maybe some C/UC at the lower end to spice things up a bit. IMO, this option is very extreme, but if we’re going to be suggesting rarity name changes I might as well embellish upon what another user has mentioned:
Arianbelle wrote:I personally think 4 new categories is too much, and we don't need a total of 4 common categories. I'm in favour of just adding Very Uncommon and Extremely Rare...
A possible idea for different category names, somewhat inspired by gacha games and very similar to what people have been suggesting:
C
C+
C++
C+++
UC
UC+
UC++
R
R+
R++
SR
SR = super rare
Maybe you all won't like it because the names are too different and no longer balanced but I think it might help commons, especially OMGSC to be seen as a little more valuable. Maybe this can help generate more ideas at least
If only two new categories were added:
C
C+
C++
UC
UC+
(Maybe there could be a UC++ here lol to match)
R
R+
R++
SR
I've seen the suggested cold to warm colours and circle to stars used in one of my games and I think it works well
I also like how this user said things. Much more eloquent than my meanderings~:
walkswithfae wrote:I recently came back to the site after a very long hiatus (long enough that I don't even have the email that my old account was created on anymore) which is why I, a relatively new account feel like I can weigh in on this. It seems the problem with the current rarity system is that it's viewed as too confusing for a casual user and makes trading more difficult. Adding more rarities may help in the short term but there will always be pets that sit on the edge of one category and another. That won't fix the long term usability of the system. Adding more categories doesn't make for more clarity. It may seem more organized on the surface but once internal values (such as dogs and cats being more valued than ponies) start coming into play it makes the system even more complicated than before. As a collectible site, it's impossible to do away with rarity entirely and it's also impossible to make every pet of the same category equally valuable. We also need to take into consideration that for lack of better words casual and serious users of this site experience it differently and have different goals when it comes to collecting pets.
I think that in order to make the system more user friendly, more transparency about what gives each pet its rarity is needed. Maybe not a whole breakdown but a general guide. If year of birth doesn't matter to rarity then that should be stated, if rarity is only based on how many of that pet are in active circulation then that fact and how many of each individual needs to be in circulation for a certain rarity category is enough. It should be easily accessed by every member of the site for example, just being able to hover over the rarity bar and seeing "uncommon means there are x-y pets active". An option could also be adding a standardized system on each pet that allows a user to indicate how much value an individual pet has to them personally. Something like this is already implemented in naming, pet groups, and sometimes in trade rules but isn't consistent across users. These changes would show that old common pets and new common pets start at the same value and each individual pet can go up or down depending on each user's personal pet preference. It also doesn't add very much work for admins as pets don't need to be redistributed between current or new categories. Options that keep everything transparent and accessible would lower that barrier to entry for learning how trading works and keep it low for casual traders.
An alternative is to do away with the rarity categories and just state on each pet's page "There are x of this pet in circulation". That is more work intensive on the admin's side but it is the most bare bones way of conveying a pet's rarity that is easy to compare between pets and everyone can understand it without any guide. You could even keep the color coding and make it so if a pet has less that 1,000 individuals in circulation then it gets a red bar or star or other form of notation and if a pet has around 2,000 in circulation then it gets an orange notation, but then we're getting really close to what's happening with what I described above but without using words to name each category.
You can lead a couple players to a marketplace, but you can’t force a specific trading system to develop… Does that make sense? Besides, at its core, CS is supposed to be FUN! FRIENDLY! (AIMED FOR A YOUNGER PLAYERBASE!) I don’t log in everyday to alt-tab, ctrl-click my way through dozens of users a minute trying to best optimize my trading opportunities. I do it to scroll around, laugh and stare in awe with other players, speculate and chat about whatever happens to catch my eye. If I wanted to be sweaty, there’s hundreds of MMOs out there that I can raise my blood pressure in.
No matter what changes occur, I’m sure the player base will adjust. It’s simply a matter of determining the fairness, intuitiveness, flexibility, and, of course, general perception of the average CS player (hello, fellow lurkers!).
Apologies if this seems scattered or overly critical. I love this pixel game and everyone here just as much as the next Smoothian (ﾉ´ з `)ノ♡
Cheers!
