We need your feedback on an update to the rarity system!

[foxz]

More detailed rarity scale will help improve trades however you do not want to over complicate it - IMHO adding the +1 label or even +2 to the top end of the scale is enough

[UnfathomableDreams]

Honestly, as someone who has had an account since 2008ish, I have never been able to participate fairly in trading. Taking dates into account is honestly kind of silly with how the algorithm works and it always added a very user unfriendly aspect to the website. There was always too much knowledge for too little benefit - I always had to overpay to get even scraps of what I wanted, and the pets I really wanted were always out of my ability to obtain, even as someone who was around during those years on and off. And some of these pets weren't even really unavailable - they were just on the fringes of being vr/rare/uncommon and people would hold fast to them being worth as much as other pets on the higher end of those spectrums.

Moving towards a less date based economy is only a good thing. Of course, there will always be people who value true date pets, so in the aspect of "user demand," they'll always have a slight leg up. But I can see additional rarities causing a shift in the trading economy - one towards looking at pets as whole species rather than just their dates. As re-releases accumulate and accounts move into/out of activity, this is the best we as a website could hope for, in my opinion. Shifting our focus and promoting/valuing the algorithm that says "there's 1,000 of this pet, so it's fair for it to cost a lot. However, there are 10,000 of this pet, so it should be relatively cheap." 7 categories is not granular enough when you have pets with very different price / availability ranges within the same category. Yes, this is something that will always occur - but with more transparency on how numbers are determined and the pets being more fairly and reasonably distributed, I think it will work out fairer for us all in the end.

Part of that, though, is transparency. We NEED to know what these new calculations will be based off of in order for this to have any meaningful impacts or change. In order to standardize trading, we need to understand what we're working with. New and old players alike need to have a concrete formula to point to to say "there's between 1,000 and 1,500 of this pet, so it is worth roughly the same as your pet of which there are also 1,000 to 1,500." It will let us understand the order of magnitude we're dealing with. If OMG so rare is, for example, less than 100. Well, that shows you how much more valuable 1/100 is than 1/10000. "Are you saying an OMG so rare should be worth 10 rares?" Not necessarily if it's an order of magnitude. If the economy settled on, say, 10:1 for trade ups, that would be 100, 1000, etc.

Of course these are only example numbers, and I can only speak as a player who has never really been involved in the trading community. Not for a lack of want, though. Not for a lack of interest in the site. But for the sheer fact that it is such an inaccessible system that even as someone who was "in on the ground floor" of it, it was impossible to handle or manage in a reasonable way.

[Schuyler]

I've been reading through the thread and just wanted to compile my thoughts on a few of the proposed ideas. Please note that these are just my personal opinions as a user and not to be taken as any kind of official staff stance.

About the names ...

1. I quite like the suggested "super duper" naming scheme. I think it's instantly intuitive (ie. whether or not you have the rarity scale memorized, "super duper" is clearly a stronger intensifier than "super"), harmonizes nicely with the vibe of the current "OMG so common/rare" names, and although it's a syllable longer, it rolls off the tongue much more easily than "extremely".

• However, it does involve a bigger change to get used to as it means doing away with the "very" names that we've been using all these years.
  
• I could also see it possibly being confusing initially for people who aren't as familiar with English, as "super duper" isn't necessarily a phrase everyone will recognize? But as a native speaker, I can't really comment on that point.

2. I know it's been said many times already, but I have to agree that simply swapping "extremely" with "super" while keeping "very" would make things more confusing, as there isn't an obvious distinction in intensity between the two adjectives. I think the active traders/collectors would quickly get used to it, but I would expect it to be a constant, unnecessary source of confusion among new players and those who only play casually.

3. "Incredibly" I don't feel is any less clunky than "extremely", and I agree "ultra" won't work either unless everyone is able to agree to a different abbreviation for either "ultra rare" or "unreleased". And then it would still be an issue as new players and people not well-versed in the lingo wouldn't be aware of that.

4. While I'm a big fan of the one-word "whimsical" names in and of themselves, I personally would have to give the idea a hard pass for the reasons already brought up. The names are fun and appealing, but far too vague for practical use. If some users are already finding the idea of four new rarities confusing and intimidating with the only change to the current naming scheme being the addition of the "extremely" degree, I can only imagine how much more overwhelming it would be to have an entirely new assortment of eleven labels to learn, with nothing about them individually clearly indicating their position on the scale. And that's from the viewpoint of a native speaker who's familiar with all these words and their general usage.
As an example, Flight Rising takes this approach with their breed rarities ("plentiful" > "common" > "uncommon" > "limited" > "rare"), and as a casual player, I have trouble keeping just those five straight because neither "plentiful" > "common" nor "limited" > "rare" makes intuitive sense to me based on the language.


• I totally understand! I actually think the ambiguity is a feature, not a bug - it may be healthier for the site if the granular rarities reminded people that nothing is really precise when it comes to rarities.
  
  "Elusive pet for auction" (note: there might be better words to use instead) I think tells you just the right thing -- this pet isn't all over the site, but it's also not extraordinarily rare... so if that sounds interesting to you based on the ballpark rarity alone, open the thread, check out the pet, make an offer!
  
  If you see "Extremely Uncommon pet for auction", the first thing I might think is -- do I have any extremely uncommon pets for trade? Will this person get mad at me if I offer several Very Uncommon pets? Would I be a fool to offer a Rare pet? Maybe it's better if I just avoid this and not offer at all.
  
  [...]

  
  This is very nice in theory and I'm sure is how some users would approach it, but I believe the majority of the trading community would follow the thought process of the second example no matter the terminology. The economy currently revolves entirely around values and rarity, and I don't see calling the rarities more ambiguous names moving the focus away from "Is X pet(s) more valuable than Y pet(s)" at all. I think the average user who was offered a "scarce" pet for their "elusive" pet would still just check the rarity scale, see that their pet is rarer, and, unless it's for a pet they desperately want, decline the trade.

5. I totally understand the confusion happening around how "extremely common" is more common than "very common", but "extremely uncommon/rare" is more rare than "very uncommon/rare". I'm not sure how that could be addressed, though, unless we were to use different adjectives for the common category (eg. "common" > "less common"), go with ambiguous labels and potentially cause even more confusion, or do away with word labels altogether and only use numbers or a visual representation like stars, as using the same intensifiers for all categories will always flip the order between common and uncommon/rare: "very common" or similar will always mean more common, while "very uncommon" will always mean less common (ie. more uncommon).

• I'm undecided about what I think of using only numbers, so I won't comment on that for now. But for accessibility reasons if nothing else, using only images wouldn't be a viable option.
• Using numbers or symbols like +/- together with the existing categories wouldn't resolve this issue, as "common++" or "common 2" would still logically indicate a degree more common than "common", but "uncommon++" or "uncommon 2" would indicate more uncommon than "uncommon".
• I'd note that we already have the flip between "very common" > "common" but "rare" > "very rare", so perhaps it's primarily the initial novelty that's creating some confusion right now?

About the visual scales ...

- I don't have a lot to say on this topic as I don't have trouble seeing colors myself and the current colored sliding scale works well enough for me. If it's changed, I think I would be fine with whatever we settled on.

- That said, I absolutely support offering multiple options to toggle based on user needs/preferences and love the suggestions so far! My personal favorite is to represent each degree in rarity as half a star from 0 to 5. I think it makes it much clearer at a glance where each rarity stands in relation to the others compared to counting notches on a sliding scale, and I'd love to see a colored star scale implemented like Pyromaniacal proposed (or Zeroness's edit - love it!), but with Fellefan's suggested colors as I find them to be far more distinct. That, along with a dichromatic and/or grayscale toggle for people who have issues with colors.

- Perhaps a version of that using four different shapes as well, one each for the three main categories (common, uncommon, rare) plus the OMG tiers?

[piepinkpony]

I made a mockup of the "star" rarity bar system using colors and graphics similar to the current rarity bars, plus a potential proposition for colors - though I'll admit I worked this up before seeing Fellefan's colors a few pages ago, and mine are fairly different & a little rough around the edges. More of a proof of concept / general visualization than anything, though at least with the star system if the colors are more similar it matters somewhat less. (There can also be an argument for similar colors suggesting that the different rarity categories are closer to each other than the old/current ones, and encouraging more trading up/down/between tiers.)

This looks very good, but I use the CSDark board theme and there are two problems:
- the black names are very hard to read,
- the half-stars in "common" and "very common" rarities are also rather hard to see, even with other, lighter themes.
So I tried to edit it and the edited version looks like this:

This is amazing!

[Panne]

@Zeroness
I hadn't considered dark mode, since I don't use it, but I don't think the text would be an issue, as it is changed to white in dark mode already. I'm also not too sure about making the background a dark solid color; what about a semitransparent grey?
I also think the common to very uncommon colors needs adjusting in general,theyre too pastel to read clearly on light mode, just like you said. (Though I didn't change it here)


Light mode ---------------- Dark mode

[Froggieee]

@Zeroness
I hadn't considered dark mode, since I don't use it, but I don't think the text would be an issue, as it is changed to white in dark mode already. I'm also not too sure about making the background a dark solid color; what about a semitransparent grey?
I also think the common to very uncommon colors needs adjusting in general,theyre too pastel to read clearly on light mode imo. (Though I didn't change it here)


Light mode ---------------- Dark mode

This! This is perfect

[Lex.]

-snip-

Part of that, though, is transparency. We NEED to know what these new calculations will be based off of in order for this to have any meaningful impacts or change. In order to standardize trading, we need to understand what we're working with. New and old players alike need to have a concrete formula to point to to say "there's between 1,000 and 1,500 of this pet, so it is worth roughly the same as your pet of which there are also 1,000 to 1,500." It will let us understand the order of magnitude we're dealing with. If OMG so rare is, for example, less than 100. Well, that shows you how much more valuable 1/100 is than 1/10000. "Are you saying an OMG so rare should be worth 10 rares?" Not necessarily if it's an order of magnitude. If the economy settled on, say, 10:1 for trade ups, that would be 100, 1000, etc.

Of course these are only example numbers, and I can only speak as a player who has never really been involved in the trading community. Not for a lack of want, though. Not for a lack of interest in the site. But for the sheer fact that it is such an inaccessible system that even as someone who was "in on the ground floor" of it, it was impossible to handle or manage in a reasonable way.

THIS. I think it's been said before that they won't be revealing the real numbers, but I'm not sure what the reasoning was or if there was reasoning.
I think that adding the numbers along with the new rarities can really help diminish a lot of the grey area when it comes to rarity and demand. I personally don't see [from my standpoint, anyway] what drawbacks there are to making the information public about the exact number of pets "in circulation" [active users].
It can not only help people gauge how hard the pet will be to find, but also how it's scarcity might influence it's value. [Of course, the owners of the pets won't be shared with this information, as it can cause spam in that users inbox or trades.]
But I think it would be nothing but helpful, and it would let the userbase finally get a grasp on things based on facts rather than opinions.

[Wookieinmashoo]

My main concern was already brought up; people not trading by rarities to begin with for rare+.
I did have another concern and I had an entire thought process about it, but I'll just be blunt. No rarities will help if we do not know how they are weighted. We still don't know hoe many of a pet needs to exist to be rare compared to the amount of active users. We don't know how many of a pet there is compared to another to make the rarity difference. I think this is important information that is needed to be shared so people are not left in the dark about how many of one pet would equal another.

I feel that this transparency will greatly help lower end trading. For higher end trading, the varying rarities can be determined when something turned rare or very rare. We already have this information, it's just really up to users to actually go by it.

Part of that, though, is transparency. We NEED to know what these new calculations will be based off of in order for this to have any meaningful impacts or change. In order to standardize trading, we need to understand what we're working with. New and old players alike need to have a concrete formula to point to to say "there's between 1,000 and 1,500 of this pet, so it is worth roughly the same as your pet of which there are also 1,000 to 1,500." It will let us understand the order of magnitude we're dealing with. If OMG so rare is, for example, less than 100. Well, that shows you how much more valuable 1/100 is than 1/10000. "Are you saying an OMG so rare should be worth 10 rares?" Not necessarily if it's an order of magnitude. If the economy settled on, say, 10:1 for trade ups, that would be 100, 1000, etc.

Of course these are only example numbers, and I can only speak as a player who has never really been involved in the trading community. Not for a lack of want, though. Not for a lack of interest in the site. But for the sheer fact that it is such an inaccessible system that even as someone who was "in on the ground floor" of it, it was impossible to handle or manage in a reasonable way.

I haven't looked the thread over except for the page 40 post, but I'm glad other people are seeing the same issue.

THIS. I think it's been said before that they won't be revealing the real numbers, but I'm not sure what the reasoning was or if there was reasoning.
I think that adding the numbers along with the new rarities can really help diminish a lot of the grey area when it comes to rarity and demand. I personally don't see [from my standpoint, anyway] what drawbacks there are to making the information public about the exact number of pets "in circulation" [active users].
It can not only help people gauge how hard the pet will be to find, but also how it's scarcity might influence it's value. [Of course, the owners of the pets won't be shared with this information, as it can cause spam in that users inbox or trades.]
But I think it would be nothing but helpful, and it would let the userbase finally get a grasp on things based on facts rather than opinions.

I would absolutely love to see hard numbers. Bringing awareness do difference in rarity can help curb demand. The skelebunny had poor demand, but when it became OMGSR people suddenly realized just how rare it was..and it was worth getting. it became wanted because everyone was made aware of its rarity.

[Pyromaniacal]

[quote="Pyromaniacal"snip

This looks very good, but I use the CSDark board theme and there are two problems:
- the black names are very hard to read,
- the half-stars in "common" and "very common" rarities are also rather hard to see, even with other, lighter themes.
So I tried to edit it and the edited version looks like this:

[/quote]

These look great! I'm rather embarrassed to admit I forgot about the dark theme (I've used CSSpace for years at this point...)

And as others have pointed out, the colors in mine aren't 100% perfect... I'd be curious to see a version in Fellefan's colors, though I'm out of the house right now so I can't do it at the moment.

[CHINARIZING]

My main concern was already brought up; people not trading by rarities to begin with for rare+.
I did have another concern and I had an entire thought process about it, but I'll just be blunt. No rarities will help if we do not know how they are weighted. We still don't know hoe many of a pet needs to exist to be rare compared to the amount of active users. We don't know how many of a pet there is compared to another to make the rarity difference. I think this is important information that is needed to be shared so people are not left in the dark about how many of one pet would equal another.

I feel that this transparency will greatly help lower end trading. For higher end trading, the varying rarities can be determined when something turned rare or very rare. We already have this information, it's just really up to users to actually go by it.

Maybe this is just the first step. It'll be really cool in general to have more info to the point of subcategories in a pet's information; there could be a section for personal stuff (name + adoption info + pet ID), rarity stuff (rarity, # of people who have it WL'ed, and last time the rarity changed.)

I'm not sure if the admins ever declined releasing the exact statistics, but as a previous staff member said (I think Lacuna? Sorry if I misremember) it's better to just rip the bandaid off. Maybe it'll hurt trading for a bit. But I think an updated rarity system, especially in the higher-end of the spectrum, can be beneficial in the long-term and for future improvements.

I'm kinda just talking idrk tbh LOL