Grand Exchange: A Different Take on the Trading Dilemma?

[Feather <3]

Ever since the rarity update happened (and honestly, even before it), I've been reading so, so many threads trying to define a clean set of rules that the community can agree on "How To Officially Trade Fairly"TM

Linking just a few for reference:
1. Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4897984
2. Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4898147
3. Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4899188
4. Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4833465

The Underlying Problem

The sad fact is that without trading, one massive, fun, and honestly critical aspect of the CS community dies. I love this site and it's painful to watch people routinely say (with good reason) that trading makes them extremely anxious, that they used to love trading and now have stopped trading entirely, that trades often turn unpleasant between partners, that it feels like you need a math degree and hours of research to know if something is fair, etc. This trend will only keep going in the same direction as more pets are released and the timelines get longer and longer.

All these recent threads propose different systems and theories for making sense of trading as the beast grows -- but it's by definition impossible to make anything precise. As a result, users will still stress about getting a slightly "worse" end of the deal within whatever system is being described. For example, even someone agreed that "within 2 years, same rarity = 1:1 swap" - that's still a generalization, and someone could "paperclip" their way up to a contradiction... so they might have a gnawing concern that their 3 month older pet is still incrementally more valuable than one being offered. That's just the nature of the beast with making a system with 15k unique pets into general trading rules.

More rarity tiers, more forums discussing back-of-the-envelope math systems to agree on... will never really catch up. What is needed is more transparency. I've seen that most often in calls to make the exact counts of pets available, but I disagree with this idea as it's messy and reduces pets to confusing numbers. I think there is a better way to add transparency and actually loosen up trading and encourage the economy to flow and people to engage again, with psychological safety that they're not being taken advantage of or there's just too much math to read up on:

A Grand Exchange! (naming up for debate heh)

What is a grand exchange? A single place on the site where you can put up one-sided trades for completion, and search across everyone else's proposed open trades.

In other words, you add your side, and specify a desired partner's side. Trades auto-complete like in the CS$ store once anyone matches your requested side exactly. This is different from a swap thread or trade thread because they're searchable globally in one place, and they're pre-committed.

This is a half baked idea, so I need your help. But what comes to my mind is a couple of core properties:

1. No equations (pets are art, not numbers in a math equation)

I believe something like this might encourage people to view pets more as individual pieces of art rather than a figure in an equation. You wouldn't be able to list "Here is my UR Banana - I want 1 non in exchange". You would have to list actual pets "Here is my UR Banana - I want *specifically* 1 UR Pickle in exchange".

We could rate limit the number of open offers each user has on the market to say, 5 active per person.

2. Truthful intentions (to avoid proposed values that have no backing)

I've seen calls to "put your money where your mouth is" when claiming xyz pets are worth more or less than something else. This moves trading discussions from a theoretical forum debate to an actual committed open ended trade.

3. Global transparency (means prices are not impossibly sticky)

Are a bunch of people asking 4 nons for their UR Lion? Are they getting it quickly, or are multiple trades sitting open? If the latter, looking at open, real offers may give you the necessary data to ask for slightly less for yours. If the former, it may give you the confidence that you can ask more without being called greedy.

Quoted pet values would be less sticky, as people no longer cling to the old, well-circulated consensus for dear life, out of fear they are being ripped off.

You no longer have to wonder if it's actually worth 1 MA, or everyone is just quoting that number because that's what they've heard or that's what they paid. Updating a "consensus value" sticker price on a forum post will no longer leave hundreds of players feeling like they've lost something; being adverse to doing this update no longer means people fear lots of pets are valued incorrectly.

If we wanted to take it a step farther and say, make the last 100 anonymous successful grand-exchange trades of any particular pet searchable (and they can disappear after they get bumped off the 100 most recent to avoid info overload), then we would have a truly searchable, democratic, and theory-free way to look at approximate pet values and engage in trading. This also builds trust that data is real, not hand-picked by someone proving a point.

To be honest, we already try to hand-roll a worse version of this with "Successful VR Trade Thread", but that thread has a bunch of equations in it: UR Tree (1.5-2 nons) = X (0.5 nons) + 10 MAs + ... that further solidifies the rarity math being used. An anonymous official archive of some recent trades, with all commentary stripped, would help people draw their own conclusions and again, view pets as art trades rather than math equations.


Thoughts?
I struggle to be concise so thank you for bearing with a text wall! Even though it's long, I really haven't thought it all the way through, and would love to hear ideas/input.

Also, I hope creating a new thread for this was appropriate - I originally drafted as a comment in one of the existing threads, but it felt like it was derailing the existing conversation. I haven't seen this brought up before, but please point me to it if I'm duplicating ideas. And finally, I know this takes development work. That's something I'd be excited to help with (maybe there are many others who are software developers who play this game), but maybe beside the point for now.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[felixforma]

I really like this idea in general! I can imagine that it would be like a combination of Flight Rising's Auction House and Dappervolk's Trade Market. (I can share screenshots if you don't play these games). It would definitely have to be filterable by year and pet rating at least.

Honestly not sure it would be that successful to ask for specific swaps though! I can see it being useful in the way that you have suggested (UR Banana for UR Pickle) and can imagine just as easily this replacing the monthly outcomes swap thread. Similarly, I had a Fae Mischief bee fox that I wanted to swap for a pink Fae Mischief fox for the LONGEST time. It took me months to find someone who was seeking exactly what I was offering. An Exchange like what you're suggesting would have surely made it way easier to find a trading partner.

On the other hand, I think this idea is undervaluing two very important facts: 1) most trades are not a perfect one-to-one swap, and 2) sometimes people don't know exactly what they want for a pet(!!) I have a few older pets I'd be interested in trading away, but mostly don't trade because I don't know what I could get for them and don't know how to find people who might be interested in them. Those are ones I can't imagine being able to put onto the Exchange because what I want is just "please offer some stuff from my WL, if it feels approximately right and I like the art of what you're offering more than what I have, I will probably accept it."

Also, it would be an incredibly massive undertaking in terms of coding for the CS team (I wonder if this is possible from a fansite perspective - or if that would even be allowed??), so I am leery of getting too on board with this even though I would love to see it. I simply don't know if it could ever happen.

[conarcoin]

I love this idea, but only in addition to the normal trading system.

[Feather <3]

Yes! I totally agree / should have clarified, nothing should change about the normal trading system, just would just be in addition :)

[Xesei]

This idea is so lovely! It's a great clash of making the community interactive again and always something trading around! Having a reason to get on and be active~ I think like other markets it would be interesting to have a sort of timing system where your trade can be on market for a certain time limit (like 24 hours) before getting booted. To avoid the problem on too many in one place.

[Hearticorn]

i think something like that would be great! i'd say that it'd be best to have a few different options of how you could set these trades up.
such as:
- selecting which specific pet you want
- "wishlist pets only" option, like you can with groups
- "make an offer" option, which is about the same as having a group of pets open for any trades.

in general though, i think a trade market setup like that would be really useful!!

[lil rascal]

Sounds like a good idea. Would especially be great for people wanting to buy and sell pets with C$

[See_Air_Ruhh_]

Oooo this is really interesting. I feel like this could potentially replace a couple existing trade threads too tbh. Curious to see how others feel ab this.

[chantolove]

i would use this so hard, but only if there was more wiggle room in asking. a 'here's this, make an offer on it' thing would appeal to me as someone who doesn't know much about trades

[Spacekkng,]

I definitely like a market place idea! As a returning player it’s been a bit overwhelming to catch up with all the changes