Upcoming Rarity Changes Discussion

[Wookieinmashoo]

So not only were the 2018 GH cats all uncommon right away, but so are the 2018 staff dogs... [thinking emoji]

I wonder if anything significant has changed about either the CS userbase (how often people adopt pets, etc.) or even about the rarity calculation system?

It's likely the same thing that happened years ago: A lot of empty accounts could be affecting the rarities. I was thinking maybe it was just the litter sizes compare to the outcome amounts were small, but after seeing so many uncommons it's probably the former. Things such as people quitting (removing all their pets from their account) or bot accounts could be causing such inflated rarities. Once these accounts are deleted the rarities will go back down.

[DrinaLestrange]

ZEL explained it on the staff litter discussion thread!
Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3902056&start=4590#p121375562

[stan.]

I still feel like it's a bit odd, it's not just this month. This year's monthly litters have a lot of uncommons and very few commons.

And practically no OMGSC have come out in years

[Brigitte Lindholm]

I think a rehaul or reset of the rarity system is in order. There's clearly something wrong when the system is meant to not include inactive accounts but the 2013 staff pet collection less rare then the 2018 set.

[EmberzTale]

I think a rehaul or reset of the rarity system is in order. There's clearly something wrong when the system is meant to not include inactive accounts but the 2013 staff pet collection less rare then the 2018 set.

The rarity system does not count inactive accounts. It only counts active accounts. The explanation for the newer staff pets being rarer is less users adopted pets this month. Just because the 2013 staff pets are older, does not mean they should be rarer.

[RandomSia]

I think a rehaul or reset of the rarity system is in order. There's clearly something wrong when the system is meant to not include inactive accounts but the 2013 staff pet collection less rare then the 2018 set.

The rarity system does not count inactive accounts. It only counts active accounts. The explanation for the newer staff pets being rarer is less users adopted pets this month. Just because the 2013 staff pets are older, does not mean they should be rarer.

Exactly, the reason the 2013s are so low is because there were a lot of empty/duplicate accounts that year and they all adopted all the pets so it inflated how many pets there were to the number of real players so that when those empty and duplicate accounts went inactive or were deleted it dropped the rarity extremely for any pets adopted during that timeframe.

[Brigitte Lindholm]

So, all those active accounts who adopted the 2013 pets (give or take the group of people who were gifted them from older accounts), did not adopt the current 2018 pets? And that's on top of all the newer players? And all those players didn't bother to grab the full amount of pets? And what is considered "active"? Is it someone who logs in 1 hours per month? If rarity is based on how likely it is for you to get a pet, in my opinion, it should be someone 10-15 hours per month, not someone who just logs in, grabs some pets and leaves. And what about Smurf accounts, Spam accounts, etc. Are those considered active, despite not having anything or just one or two pets on them? Or Hoarder accounts which bring up the amount of pets but bring down the likelihood of that pet being traded? Are their hoards counted as "tradable"?

I just feel like having a 2009 dog with the same rarity as a 2018 dog just doesn't make any sense at all. Because there are definitely not the same amount of people trading these two dogs and I thought the whole point of the rarity system is to help people figure out how hard it will be to find a trade for the pet they want. Some of the hardest pets i've found to find are usually in the common-uncommon range and the rares are extremely easy to find trades for, which is the opposite of what the system is telling me. It's a bit frustrating. (I know that more people are willing to advertise their rares but I actively seek out the common/uncommon pets. I'm even having trouble finding OMGSC pets and it's even harder to find people willing to trade them.)

By the way the rarity system has been going, almost all of the Halloween pets will be rares. Which, in my opinion, is extremely unfair to new players who weren't here during the event or dont have time to stay on the website for hours on end collecting candy.

[EmberzTale]

Rarity is not calculated by how many users are willing to trade the pet. It has to do with how many users are active who own the pet. Maybe some users simply didn’t have time to adopt the monthly pets, weren’t interested in them, forgot to adopt them, are only here for other site trades or art, are only here for forums; there’s many other reasons. I think hoarder accounts should be counted towards rarity and so should account that just log in to adopt pets and account that don’t adopt pets. Every user is welcome to play CS their own way and that doesn’t make their account any more invalid.

Just because you’re not finding the pets, does not mean they’re not around. They have the common tag because they are in fact common pets. Some users don’t even bother trading pets below rare so maybe they just have them in some locked group for things they’re not trading. Or they simply don’t advertise their trading topic. Just because you are seeing more rare pets for trade, doesn’t mean the pets aren’t rare. It’s the specific pet itself that is rare, not the tag. Their could be 200 different rare pets and only 50 different common pets but that doesn’t change that the pet is common. That just means that out of the 200 different rare pets, there’s only 5 of each pet and out of the 50 different common pets, there could be 600 of each. The pet itself carries the rarity, not the tag.

The event pets are usually rare each year. That’s because quite a few users don’t actively participate in the events for a variety of reasons as stated above. I don’t find it unfair because it’s just a game and if there would be no challenge to the game.

I think there’s nothing wrong with the rarity system.

[nickjr]

I can pull up quotes later (on phone and rushing IRL), but my impression is that active = logged in within past 12 months, maybe not 12—maybe 13 or 14 or 11 but roughly there. Seems just fine to me as you gotta remember not all active traders are active as in “actively doing stuff”; they could be casual players who do, in fact, still check CS somewhat regularly, meaning they should see your trade relatively soon. It’s easy to forget about them when you’re in the forums

[RandomSia]

I agree with nickjr and EmberzTale, just because you can't find them for trade doesn't mean they don't exist. There are people that have unlimited hoards for common and uncommon pets, they're easier to have large hoards since they aren't rare. There are also a percentage of people that donate all their less than uncommon pets as they are "worthless" it terms of trading for the older rarer pets. When I'm missing commons, I tend to hit the Free pets thread, there are adoption centers for older players, not just new ones. As well as making sure I get into the Pound as much as possible as again, there are mostly lower rarity pets in there.

The numbers are the numbers, event pets are frequently much higher rarity because maybe people didn't collect as many tokens this year? Maybe people didn't like the designs of the token pets? Not everyone plays the same and they really do just want to collect the pets they want and not everything.