Does anyone else feel like Demand is killing CS?

[ariadne]

Well, if people insisting that what they like most is the most valuable is the problem, then why not get rid of the notion of "fair" trades? Just trade a pet you have for one you like more based purely off of the rarity tags it has and leave demand up to the individual with no commonly accepted quantifiers a lá "1.5 nons" whatsoever. I believe that was the initial vision of the staff, no?

[Loelya]

Well, if people insisting that what they like most is the most valuable is the problem, then why not get rid of the notion of "fair" trades? Just trade a pet you have for one you like more based purely off of the rarity tags it has and leave demand up to the individual with no commonly accepted quantifiers a lá "1.5 nons" whatsoever. I believe that was the initial vision of the staff, no?

this would absolutely be ideal but the problem is that people “like” pets for different reasons. This would work if people traded purely by which pets they most value the design of, but many players “like” certain pets the most because they are considered most valuable — and have said as much.

[ariadne]

Well, if people insisting that what they like most is the most valuable is the problem, then why not get rid of the notion of "fair" trades? Just trade a pet you have for one you like more based purely off of the rarity tags it has and leave demand up to the individual with no commonly accepted quantifiers a lá "1.5 nons" whatsoever. I believe that was the initial vision of the staff, no?

this would absolutely be ideal but the problem is that people “like” pets for different reasons. This would work if people traded purely by which pets they most value the design of, but many players “like” certain pets the most because they are considered most valuable — and have said as much.

That could be solved by removing any effort to chronicle pet rarity so after a while once the rares list becomes hopelessly outdated the only reference point will be pet rarities. Pair that with another rarity update and any way to tell how valuable a pet is outside of it's tag would be gone.

[Asvoria]

Well, if people insisting that what they like most is the most valuable is the problem, then why not get rid of the notion of "fair" trades? Just trade a pet you have for one you like more based purely off of the rarity tags it has and leave demand up to the individual with no commonly accepted quantifiers a lá "1.5 nons" whatsoever. I believe that was the initial vision of the staff, no?

this would absolutely be ideal but the problem is that people “like” pets for different reasons. This would work if people traded purely by which pets they most value the design of, but many players “like” certain pets the most because they are considered most valuable — and have said as much.

That could be solved by removing any effort to chronicle pet rarity so after a while once the rares list becomes hopelessly outdated the only reference point will be pet rarities. Pair that with another rarity update and any way to tell how valuable a pet is outside of it's tag would be gone.

"Removing any effort to chronicle pet rarity" sounds a bit like strictly controlling any historical information on CS. You'd need mods to look on that and the owner's interest in such a project, otherwise it won't happen.
Do you really want that all pets are worth equal? Wouldn't this site completely loose it's purpose? Most people join here out of fun and because collecting each pet is rather hard, but also achievable if one has patience and time.
How unfair would it be to all those that have spent so much effort in trying to get that one very valuable pet they really wanted? Tearing the list down was already very unfortunate for those that had traded up precisely by it and I can somewhat understand that they still hold onto a system that once worked for them.
Change takes time and that Rarity List or the Current Demand List could be just a random popup in a large forum fart, so I think what's really important is that you feel comfortable with how you trade and not how others do it.

[amarok.]

Well, if people insisting that what they like most is the most valuable is the problem, then why not get rid of the notion of "fair" trades? Just trade a pet you have for one you like more based purely off of the rarity tags it has and leave demand up to the individual with no commonly accepted quantifiers a lá "1.5 nons" whatsoever. I believe that was the initial vision of the staff, no?

this would absolutely be ideal but the problem is that people “like” pets for different reasons. This would work if people traded purely by which pets they most value the design of, but many players “like” certain pets the most because they are considered most valuable — and have said as much.

It's probably part of the reason I fell in love with the sunjewel and spent nearly nine years trying to get one. Sure, there's other pets i've always really loved the design of but there's never really been a pet i've aspired to have as much as the sunjewel. Back when I joined they were the most expensive pets that just everybody who was anybody would tote in their signatures and little primary school Amar just fell head over heels in love with the design and in some small way the connotations the sunjewel carried, too. Eventually one absolutely incredible user decided to just drop a sunjewel into my lap this Christmas and I kid you not, I literally cried when I opened the trade. Like proper, ugly crying, not some small little sniffles. In part because I could finally have my own little sunbeam to dress up and adore and show off in my signature but, in some small way, having something deemed truly valuable in my account was just so unbelievable, let alone that this amazing soul had literally grinded for months to get one for me. In a way it made me feel like a "valid" chickensmoothier because look, I now had this prestigious little precious baby in my hands. In my head I now basically had the most valuable pet in the game. I know that's not quite correct these day, of course, but it's funny how these things stay with you. And to be frank, you could offer me five skelebuns in exchange for this one pet and i'd still turn you down.
They're not as popular now of course, nor are they considered to be extremely valuable anymore (I've heard people saying they've had bad demand, even) but I still just absolutely fawn over them at every possible chance I get. Mostly because i adore the design with every fibre of my being, yes, but there's still a large part of me screaming that hey, i have a sunjewel. the sunjewel. It's not just some pixels on a page or numbers in an algorithm; a lot of people attach sentimental value to some pets, even if they don't own them, for reasons like these. They're expensive, unobtainable, and you like the design. People want stuff they can't have. And as such people will pay through the nose if they think that's what it will take to get those pets when quite frankly you shouldn't have to. I can understand that extra for demand is warranted in some cases, of course, but the issue is that demand for some pets is now over the line to the point where even ceasing to consider in-depth rarity at all will never fix it because to be perfectly candid it's not really considered these days anyway. not considered to the point that i was personally deeply shocked when i found out that a random bunny from the advent list is considerably rarer than a dog i've been told for nearly a decade is worth 3-4x more than what its rarity tag says.

-snip-
That could be solved by removing any effort to chronicle pet rarity so after a while once the rares list becomes hopelessly outdated the only reference point will be pet rarities. Pair that with another rarity update and any way to tell how valuable a pet is outside of it's tag would be gone.

i absolutely don't intend to sound harsh or rude but what you're proposing ariadne would just become a demand freeforall where, again, people with the most desirable pets would eventually end up on the top of the hill, the system would cycle to fawn over another pet and suddenly the people who traded their souls for those pixels will lose basically everything. you cannot stand here and complain about demand and rarity and everything about this system if your "solution" is the worst case scenario, nor should you really be complaining if you are not willing to contribute to solving the issue in any way at all other than said complaining. we're doing our best to put forward reasonable, workable solutions, not utpoian ideas that would worsen the situation or not work at all. as asvoria stated above, this would require moderators to literally censor everything anybody had to say about true rarities, demand, etc. absolutely not.
but if you really think that somebody with their '19 store pet should be able to swap it entirely fairly for your hypothetical UR Aussie then please, lead by example. i'm sure we'd all love to see that trade once you've completed the swap.

[Law]

Reiterating the point that if you want to lower demand, you can help by making better trades and posting them on the VR and OMGSR Successful Trades Thread. For the years I've been on CS, the most "accurate" way to determine a pet's value has always been to see what other people are trading for it. A lot of answers you'll see on the FTT are like "Ravens has been going for X amount of Y lately". Just talking about demand as a problem doesn't really do much.

[ariadne]

i absolutely don't intend to sound harsh or rude but what you're proposing ariadne would just become a demand freeforall where, again, people with the most desirable pets would eventually end up on the top of the hill, the system would cycle to fawn over another pet and suddenly the people who traded their souls for those pixels will lose basically everything. you cannot stand here and complain about demand and rarity and everything about this system if your "solution" is the worst case scenario, nor should you really be complaining if you are not willing to contribute to solving the issue in any way at all other than said complaining. we're doing our best to put forward reasonable, workable solutions, not utpoian ideas that would worsen the situation or not work at all.
but if you really think that somebody with their '19 store pet should be able to swap it entirely fairly for your hypothetical UR Aussie then please, lead by example. i'm sure we'd all love to see that trade once you've completed the swap.

I never said I agreed with that system, I only said that this could be another potential avenue and opened that possibility up for discussion.

You can't insist that the status of a pet is important to collecting and then want to remove the very thing that gave the pet that status in the first place aka the rares list.
If you remove the measuring stick of the rares list inherent status of pets disappears and turns into "whatever pet is fashionable right now." If you trade just to own valuable things of course you will be disappointed but if you traded just to own a pretty pet that pet does not disappear just because the demand is gone.

[Law]

If you remove the measuring stick of the rares list inherent status of pets disappears and turns into "whatever pet is fashionable right now." If you trade just to own valuable things of course you will be disappointed but if you traded just to own a pretty pet that pet does not disappear just because the demand is gone.

It's an interesting idea but like with the rares list people are just going to take a snapshot of the current rarities. There'll be a lot of ex-OMGSR and ex-VR terminology thrown around. The measuring stick won't just disappear.

This post tells us what the ratio of pets to users were in 2009. is a bit dated but for very rares and OMGSR, there is definitely not going to be one pet for every user that wants one. Therefore, until CS dies, demand will always come into play because there's always going to be more users who want the rare and popular pets than there are in existence.

The only way the system you proposed would work is if everyone magically forgets all about the current rarities, and more VR and OMGSR pets are added to balance the numbers out.

[ariadne]

If you remove the measuring stick of the rares list inherent status of pets disappears and turns into "whatever pet is fashionable right now." If you trade just to own valuable things of course you will be disappointed but if you traded just to own a pretty pet that pet does not disappear just because the demand is gone.

It's an interesting idea but like with the rares list people are just going to take a snapshot of the current rarities. There'll be a lot of ex-OMGSR and ex-VR terminology thrown around. The measuring stick won't just disappear.

This post tells us what the ratio of pets to users were in 2009. is a bit dated but for very rares and OMGSR, there is definitely not going to be one pet for every user that wants one. Therefore, until CS dies, demand will always come into play because there's always going to be more users who want the rare and popular pets than there are in existence.

The only way the system you proposed would work is if everyone magically forgets all about the current rarities, and more VR and OMGSR pets are added to balance the numbers out.

You misunderstand, I don't propose removing rarity altogether, I propose that we ignore the rares list and treat pets entirely by how much we like them - e.g. if I found I very rare I liked more I'd trade it for my Cookie 1:1.

If there is no list of pets that are considered more valuable than their tags then the status of a "high list" pet will fade and demand fluctuates enough that people trying to follow it will get fed up quickly. I don't love the idea but maybe it could be possible to turn CS trading into something more shallow so that not every trade becomes a research project.

[amarok.]

Reiterating the point that if you want to lower demand, you can help by making better trades and posting them on the VR and OMGSR Successful Trades Thread. For the years I've been on CS, the most "accurate" way to determine a pet's value has always been to see what other people are trading for it. A lot of answers you'll see on the FTT are like "Ravens has been going for X amount of Y lately". Just talking about demand as a problem doesn't really do much.

Hence the idea of really pushing forward with actual rarities and quoting rarity change data rather than just rattling off the demand values. If people realise that what they're being asked to pay for pets is ridiculous there's a fair chance it'll become hard enough to trade those pets for the asking price that the asking price will drop.

I'm not really in a position to lead by example, since I don't exactly have much involvement with high value trading, but I make a point to keep an eye on ftt and make sure people are aware of actual values as well as what the pet may be trading for. I feel that if somebody is going to complain about demand being to high or that rarities are not considered they should make some effort to do the same, whether they're capable of trading like this to reinforce this or not.

If you remove the measuring stick of the rares list inherent status of pets disappears and turns into "whatever pet is fashionable right now." If you trade just to own valuable things of course you will be disappointed but if you traded just to own a pretty pet that pet does not disappear just because the demand is gone.

It's an interesting idea but like with the rares list people are just going to take a snapshot of the current rarities. There'll be a lot of ex-OMGSR and ex-VR terminology thrown around. The measuring stick won't just disappear.

This post tells us what the ratio of pets to users were in 2009. is a bit dated but for very rares and OMGSR, there is definitely not going to be one pet for every user that wants one. Therefore, until CS dies, demand will always come into play because there's always going to be more users who want the rare and popular pets than there are in existence.

The only way the system you proposed would work is if everyone magically forgets all about the current rarities, and more VR and OMGSR pets are added to balance the numbers out.

You misunderstand, I don't propose removing rarity altogether, I propose that we ignore the rares list and treat pets entirely by how much we like them - e.g. if I found I very rare I liked more I'd trade it for my Cookie 1:1.

If there is no list of pets that are considered more valuable than their tags then the status of a "high list" pet will fade and demand fluctuates enough that people trying to follow it will get fed up quickly. I don't love the idea but maybe it could be possible to turn CS trading into something more shallow so that not every trade becomes a research project.

We do ignore the rares list. Nobody who knows what they're doing really quotes the ex list anymore unless there is no other data available. Everybody here knows it was largely inaccurate. However many people, including myself, consider rarity to be an integral part of a pet's value and we *will* continue to use it to compare pets. To achieve what you're suggesting, there would need to be mass censorship from the site. It would essentially be suicide for Tess to allow it I think, as everybody would leave.