[🐝] Guide to Trading Every Pet on CS --- **being updated**

[♥Princess of Lions♥]

(For people that just want to see what to add to one pet)
Same thing above visualized as a basic "jump" from one group to the next one:

(Legacy/stores) are special case-by-case

High OMGSR (July Tier) = unnamed UR Tier from below + Low OMGSR --- OR --- 2 Standard OMGSR
High OMGSR (unnamed UR Tier) = Standard OMGSR from below + Low OMGSR
Standard OMGSR (Non Tier) = Aussie Tier from below + (1-2 ER?) --- OR --- 2 Low OMGSR
Standard OMGSR (Aussie Tier) = Low OMGSR from below + (1-2 ER)
Low/New OMGSR = Upper ER from below + (1-3 mix of any other ER pets)
Upper ER = Low ER from below + (1-2 Old Rares)
Lower ER = Upper VR from below + (1-2 Old Rares)
VR (Pre Update) = Oldish VR from below + (1-2 EUC)
VR (New) = (Any basic pet guidelines like 2:1 math, or small year difference swaps)

-snip-

This is something I feel like I could trade in and understand, especially if the rarity categories are kept as simple as is fair... I know several people were resonating with not understanding the higher rarity trading system, would this work for you, too? Or are there reasons it wouldn't?

This is how the super old original rare's list did values for trading and honestly, in practice it's WAY more confusing than just labeling everything with a price in "nons". With the current non pricing system, all you have to do is take out a calculator and add the prices of pets together to get the total value of each side in a trade. The only reason there's any confusion is because sometimes values have a range (e.g. a pet being worth 1.5-2 nons instead of exactly 1.5 or exactly 2) and there isn't a guide that has each pet with an exact value. But if you talk to people who know all the pet values like in the CS Discord, they can very easily tell you the pet values and even do the math for you since everyone has calculators.

In the quoted system, it's only easier if you actually have pets on the right side of the = sign. For example,

High OMGSR (July Tier) = unnamed UR Tier from below + Low OMGSR --- OR --- 2 Standard OMGSR

Let's pretend I'm trying to trade for someone's High OMGSR pet. If I have a pet from the tier below AND a low OMGSR, or two standard OMGSR, that's great! But if I don't have that exact offer, it gets INCREDIBLY more complicated because you have to convert every tier. Let's pretend I only have pets in the low OMGSR tier to trade. Now I have to find where my pet is located, then look up how many of them I need to add to get to the value of the next tier up, and then do that again until I reach the tier I'm trying to trade for. How in the world is that easier than pulling out a calculator and typing in 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.25 = 2

Instead of using one currency (nons) for everything, this proposed system literally requires you to convert currency at every tier (each tier functions as a separate currency). Maybe it SOUNDS easier because the only numbers on this chart are 1 and 2, but if you actually tried trading like this it would be way way worse. If anyone who used to trade by the original rare's list is around I bet they would back me up on this.

[kee;]

I used to trade with the old rares list and I didn’t find it to be that complicated because, in my opinion, trading wasn’t as strict. now, every pet has a hard range of value that it’s worth. I remember trading for pets higher up on the list and didn’t do a bunch of math to figure it out. I just looked at where my pets were located and where the one I was trading for was located, and my trading partner and I figured out a trade that worked for both of us. we could both look at the list and decide if it felt fair and I certainty wasn’t doing any complicated math.

I don’t know if that’s just how it worked for me at the time, but I think the big difference in trading now is how much more strict it is and I think that came about with the type of evaluation system we’ve been using in more recent years.

-kee

[Herald of the Arcane]

I remember the old list being completely incompehensible to me when it was a thing so i gave up trading any of those pets entirely. I really hope we don't go back to something like it or similar. I still cannot understand how to use the old list.

[Startedraining]

the rares list was not good for me at all and encouraged unfair trading for perceived demand and value, and the rarity update made things a lot clearer. Popularity definitely still matters but rarities are now more specific which makes it easier to trade pets of the same rarity. I dont think there should be a breakdown between “””””high”””” omgsr and standard because there are a similar amount of them on site. Adding tiers makes things more complicated and unfriendly to new users and reinforces a toxic trading environment -__-

[Lacuna]

(usual disclaimer that I'm not speaking as staff nor using any privileged information to draw my conclusions because I don't have any, lol)

I'm okay with having separation in the OMGSRs to a limited degree because we have information that the ones that were OMGSR before this update are likely still rarer since they were already such a special category (but it's possible they're not, we don't have enough information to know that for sure when things like the active user threshold have been changed). There are some pets that are special (stores especially) in that "used to be OMGSR" tier but it is a very small percentage of a very small percentage of pets on the site and I think that not separating the new OMGSRs or the bulk of the old OMGSRs aids trading and is realistic to a system where the old rarity data isn't as reliable because the thresholds for everything have been changed, and where rerelease adds more pets into circulation every year. I understand if the eventual guide still relies on the old data for more tiers, but I personally wouldn't follow them that closely.

I don't support having tiers in the Extremely Rare pets because I don't think we have enough information to make those tiers since it's a whole new rarity that basically just groups a section of the old Very Rare pets together. We went from having just VR to those pets either holding VR rarity (one tier) bumping to ER (another tier) or becoming OMGSR (a third tier). We needed tiers before because we didn't have those distinctions, but now we do. They all changed at the same time along with the other rarity-determining variables so we can't really say anything in the ER tier is worth more than others there even checking old data. I can see saying the "new" VR pets are potentially not as rare as the ones that were VR before and held their rarity, but also, they /did/ hold that rarity so maybe they are and the thresholds affected them, and I would not feel it necessary to add very much at all to a trade involving them.

I'm also not comfortable with saying the majority of OMGSRs (stores excepted) are worth more than at most 3-6 ER pets, or that any ER pet is worth more than 2-3 VR pets because rerelease intentionally puts them back into circulation/creates more so no regular pet will ever get that exponentially rare. If you trade rares 2:1 into a VR and then 3:1 into and ER and 6:1 into an OMGSR that's still 36 old rares for an OMGSR which is a lot imo and more than sufficient to account for rarity differences (considering you likely did quite a few other 2:1 trades to get up the ladder to old rare in the first place, more than you would have before we had 4 new rarities). It may seem like fewer pets overall, but I think it's more that the pets are more evenly distributed over the spectrum of rarity so we don't need to make such huge jumps at the top.

Just wanted to end on a thought/hypothesis about rarity in general, which is that as some old user accounts inevitably go inactive I feel it's reasonable to say that rerelease pets account for a vast majority of what is available because even if the users who hold the original date 2008 pets are still active, it's unlikely they're being traded. So it's really the rarity of pets on rerelease over the years that's most indicative of how rare a pet is. This would likely mean UR pets are actually worth less than their stated rarity of OMGSR on release because in order for them to match pets that have been getting rereleased for over a decade already, they are (noticeable if watching what people pull) actually a lot more common and you have more chances to pull them because you can get them from any box. Obviously, we don't know yet how this new rarity change will affect rerelease, but I'm excited to see if there's any data we can glean from it.

[Solloby]

I just put together a spider rarity guide, and assumed since there were only 2 ERs that they could sit together, but after I gathered their rarity history I realised that they really didn't belong together.

Malkavian Spider (Feb 10) went VR back in Jan 2012.
Red-kneed Tarantula (May 09) went VR in Jan 2019 alongside a set of 5 other spiders who remain VR today.

To me this suggests the Malkavian is rarer than the Tarantula, as that is a very big date gap between rarity changes. It suggests that the Malkavian is more likely to remain ER after this year's rerelease compared to the Tarantula, although we cannot know for sure until January. I think the thing that's really important to note here, is that the older spider (2009) is currently looking like a lower rarity ER compared to the newer spider (2010) based on their past rarity history.

So if we just throw all the ERs in together and say "they all have the same tag, swap them at will", people may look at the dates and go "you need to add to your pet because mine's older" even though theirs is actually the less rare outcome, not more rare. So however the community decides to handle ERs, I do think it needs to be pointed out that older dates don't always mean rarer pets.

[Sashtato]

(usual disclaimer that I'm not speaking as staff nor using any privileged information to draw my conclusions because I don't have any, lol)

I'm okay with having separation in the OMGSRs to a limited degree because we have information that the ones that were OMGSR before this update are likely still rarer since they were already such a special category (but it's possible they're not, we don't have enough information to know that for sure when things like the active user threshold have been changed). There are some pets that are special (stores especially) in that "used to be OMGSR" tier but it is a very small percentage of a very small percentage of pets on the site and I think that not separating the new OMGSRs or the bulk of the old OMGSRs aids trading and is realistic to a system where the old rarity data isn't as reliable because the thresholds for everything have been changed, and where rerelease adds more pets into circulation every year. I understand if the eventual guide still relies on the old data for more tiers, but I personally wouldn't follow them that closely.

I don't support having tiers in the Extremely Rare pets because I don't think we have enough information to make those tiers since it's a whole new rarity that basically just groups a section of the old Very Rare pets together. We went from having just VR to those pets either holding VR rarity (one tier) bumping to ER (another tier) or becoming OMGSR (a third tier). We needed tiers before because we didn't have those distinctions, but now we do. They all changed at the same time along with the other rarity-determining variables so we can't really say anything in the ER tier is worth more than others there even checking old data. I can see saying the "new" VR pets are potentially not as rare as the ones that were VR before and held their rarity, but also, they /did/ hold that rarity so maybe they are and the thresholds affected them, and I would not feel it necessary to add very much at all to a trade involving them.

I'm also not comfortable with saying the majority of OMGSRs (stores excepted) are worth more than at most 3-6 ER pets, or that any ER pet is worth more than 2-3 VR pets because rerelease intentionally puts them back into circulation/creates more so no regular pet will ever get that exponentially rare. If you trade rares 2:1 into a VR and then 3:1 into and ER and 6:1 into an OMGSR that's still 36 old rares for an OMGSR which is a lot imo and more than sufficient to account for rarity differences (considering you likely did quite a few other 2:1 trades to get up the ladder to old rare in the first place, more than you would have before we had 4 new rarities). It may seem like fewer pets overall, but I think it's more that the pets are more evenly distributed over the spectrum of rarity so we don't need to make such huge jumps at the top.

Just wanted to end on a thought/hypothesis about rarity in general, which is that as some old user accounts inevitably go inactive I feel it's reasonable to say that rerelease pets account for a vast majority of what is available because even if the users who hold the original date 2008 pets are still active, it's unlikely they're being traded. So it's really the rarity of pets on rerelease over the years that's most indicative of how rare a pet is. This would likely mean UR pets are actually worth less than their stated rarity of OMGSR on release because in order for them to match pets that have been getting rereleased for over a decade already, they are (noticeable if watching what people pull) actually a lot more common and you have more chances to pull them because you can get them from any box. Obviously, we don't know yet how this new rarity change will affect rerelease, but I'm excited to see if there's any data we can glean from it.

I cannot agree more with everything you said!! I hope users take this into consideration when trading and making guides. I’m with you 100%!

[angst]

(usual disclaimer that I'm not speaking as staff nor using any privileged information to draw my conclusions because I don't have any, lol)

I'm okay with having separation in the OMGSRs to a limited degree because we have information that the ones that were OMGSR before this update are likely still rarer since they were already such a special category (but it's possible they're not, we don't have enough information to know that for sure when things like the active user threshold have been changed). There are some pets that are special (stores especially) in that "used to be OMGSR" tier but it is a very small percentage of a very small percentage of pets on the site and I think that not separating the new OMGSRs or the bulk of the old OMGSRs aids trading and is realistic to a system where the old rarity data isn't as reliable because the thresholds for everything have been changed, and where rerelease adds more pets into circulation every year. I understand if the eventual guide still relies on the old data for more tiers, but I personally wouldn't follow them that closely.

I don't support having tiers in the Extremely Rare pets because I don't think we have enough information to make those tiers since it's a whole new rarity that basically just groups a section of the old Very Rare pets together. We went from having just VR to those pets either holding VR rarity (one tier) bumping to ER (another tier) or becoming OMGSR (a third tier). We needed tiers before because we didn't have those distinctions, but now we do. They all changed at the same time along with the other rarity-determining variables so we can't really say anything in the ER tier is worth more than others there even checking old data. I can see saying the "new" VR pets are potentially not as rare as the ones that were VR before and held their rarity, but also, they /did/ hold that rarity so maybe they are and the thresholds affected them, and I would not feel it necessary to add very much at all to a trade involving them.

I'm also not comfortable with saying the majority of OMGSRs (stores excepted) are worth more than at most 3-6 ER pets, or that any ER pet is worth more than 2-3 VR pets because rerelease intentionally puts them back into circulation/creates more so no regular pet will ever get that exponentially rare. If you trade rares 2:1 into a VR and then 3:1 into and ER and 6:1 into an OMGSR that's still 36 old rares for an OMGSR which is a lot imo and more than sufficient to account for rarity differences (considering you likely did quite a few other 2:1 trades to get up the ladder to old rare in the first place, more than you would have before we had 4 new rarities). It may seem like fewer pets overall, but I think it's more that the pets are more evenly distributed over the spectrum of rarity so we don't need to make such huge jumps at the top.

Just wanted to end on a thought/hypothesis about rarity in general, which is that as some old user accounts inevitably go inactive I feel it's reasonable to say that rerelease pets account for a vast majority of what is available because even if the users who hold the original date 2008 pets are still active, it's unlikely they're being traded. So it's really the rarity of pets on rerelease over the years that's most indicative of how rare a pet is. This would likely mean UR pets are actually worth less than their stated rarity of OMGSR on release because in order for them to match pets that have been getting rereleased for over a decade already, they are (noticeable if watching what people pull) actually a lot more common and you have more chances to pull them because you can get them from any box. Obviously, we don't know yet how this new rarity change will affect rerelease, but I'm excited to see if there's any data we can glean from it.

Super interested in all you said here!

I think any guide then should focus on dividing up the specifics of how to make those rarity jumps. It feels hard, though, when we have these flashy new tags that sort of feeling like a part of the pet itself. People aren't objective and aren't realistically looking to be when trading, and I can definitely see people paying multiple ERs (more than what is listed above) because part of what you're "paying" for is a fancy, fun new rarity tag. Just a thought there about that last jump, as I think it may end up being bigger as people hope to collect OMGSR for the rarity's own sake.

[SolarSonnet]

Seeing how this has sat for a few days without any discussion going on.. Is there anything else to discuss? Does anybody have any more input?

I posted a few days ago on this discussion page, and kept checking in each day for an answer but it seems the conversation in a lot of these threads came to a standstill all at once.

[*AlpacaBella*]

Genuiene question - is a uncommon (from 2014) worth half of a 2014 very uncommon? And then the same again for an extremely uncommon?
I'm trying to do the rarity maths but unsure of the new system XD