We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openings?

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Should we have bigger, less frequent pound openings?

Poll ended at Mon Apr 22, 2024 11:26 am

Yes - increase pound size to 1800 pets and open 1.7 times per day
1121
35%
No - keep pound size at 1300 pets and open 2.4 times per day
2113
65%
 
Total votes : 3234

Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Buster2918 » Tue Apr 16, 2024 6:33 pm

Darkcloud! wrote:Quick disagreement with the mixing up of pets on a page-
I have numbers dyslexia. If you put a 2024 pet next to a 2014 pet, unless I have the pet's image committed to memory or one is WL and the other is not, I /will/ mix those numbers up. It's fine being in order of release date. Oftentimes the pet I actually want is 3-4 pets in.

The pound shouldn't punish those with slower word-image processing disorders because the greed-rare-grab tactic is being abused. There's other ways to combat this, and I think the delay is a good first step, and should be taken farther by showing the rare pets to a wider pool of people at all times.


As someone with dyscalculia, too (assuming that's what you are talking about), I fully understand your struggles regarding that! They are very real and valid and you are seen. <3 We are, unfortunately, a minority on the website and I believe whatever change comes out of this should be directed towards helping the majority of users in a broad sense. There are things individuals like us can do, though, such as certain extensions to modify text sizes and even fonts that are more dyscalculia and dyslexia friendly! They have helped me and a few people I know quite a lot when we are online. I do not disagree that CS should ever punish a group of people with very real struggles, nor do I think they would, but CS cannot make changes for each and every processing disorder that their members have- I mean they could, but that would be VERY complex and almost non-achievable in an efficient sense.

At the end of the day, the dates are the last thing I'm personally worried about. The only reason I'd even care to keep it in is for the sake of newer players mostly, as for me, I could go without it and I do not often look at dates since I am pre-programmed to click the top left pet OR quickly glance around for recognizable rares that I have remembered over the years. If they got rid of the dates and still implemented the shuffling of pets, I would be equally as happy, but it would now be unfair to newer players, hence the only reason I would consider dates being kept.

Like I said, rares are not guaranteed and the odds are stacked against us all for even seeing one, let alone catching one before all other users. Pets of older dates/higher rarity are not owed to us in any sense. All we can do is say "better luck next time" and be all that more excited once we DO catch a rare. It is far more rewarding to get one when I've been unlucky rather than seeing a rare every time.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Blaubär » Tue Apr 16, 2024 7:15 pm

I haven't read most of the previous posts, because I don't have the time to, but wanted to leave a quick comment.

I don't always have the time to look for pound openings. I do that randomly and often enough I come very late to the party and get to pick something from the leftovers (both pets and items) - which is fine, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, though I see, when it will open and I come back at that time to have a chance for a rarer/older pet. I love that this is possible. Without it, I'd most likely only ever see the stuff most others didn't want. At the moment it's a mixture of adopting whatever is there and then sometimes finding something really exciting.

If the frequency of openings were lower, to me that means I'd be less likely to catch it at all, so I prefer the smaller size, but more frequent openings. I'd even prefer more frequent openings than we have now, if that were an option, which I don't think it is. Just my thought on that.

I found out a couple of years ago, that you can check the pound before it opens and I have looked, but I don't know that I ever got any of the more interesting pets that I saw there, so while it is an interesting glimpse, it doesn't mean you have any influence over what you actually get, once the pound opens. It's a fun detail, you can look, but you might also end up being disappointed, because you didn't get, what you saw. I think it's totally fine.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Darkcloud! » Tue Apr 16, 2024 7:36 pm

Buster2918 wrote:
Like I said, rares are not guaranteed and the odds are stacked against us all for even seeing one, let alone catching one before all other users. Pets of older dates/higher rarity are not owed to us in any sense. All we can do is say "better luck next time" and be all that more excited once we DO catch a rare. It is far more rewarding to get one when I've been unlucky rather than seeing a rare every time.


I'm not sure where people are missing my point- it's not just you, you just happened to be the only one to respond directly.

We should all be seeing at least two to three rares (or higher) per opening with the ratios and the way the new delay system works. Will you actually catch it? That's the 7% chance of you competing against other users looking at the same pets. Your chances actually go up if it's a rat or a horse, or a monthly vs event, and go down if it's a highly popular pet.

CS has never been transparent about how and who the system chooses to get to see a rare. I'd like to know how it's done before we go assuming that bots and all these complex theories are the reason that people are saying that that they lack the option to click on one.

Once again, to clarify, we are absolutely owned an explanation of how the system chooses to show pets. We should absolutely have equal chance to click on a rare as everyone else who enters the pound. The comments have all expressed varying degrees that they feel the pound is unfair, and that the chance to try to click on something is not being distributed equally. People are choosing to mainly focus on bots, changing the layout etc- but before these large changes are considered for implementation-

I would like to know how does the pound choose who gets to see the rare+ pets?
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Gamezelle » Tue Apr 16, 2024 10:03 pm

The message "Already taken" appearing live is a really nice and fun add to the Pound.

Although it does confirm what I always believed : people are completely obsessed with the first row, especially the first pet :clap:
It's especially incredible when the message pop-up before the page is fully loaded.

We definitely need pet order to be randomized.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby exile. » Wed Apr 17, 2024 1:12 am

Darkcloud! wrote:
Buster2918 wrote:
Like I said, rares are not guaranteed and the odds are stacked against us all for even seeing one, let alone catching one before all other users. Pets of older dates/higher rarity are not owed to us in any sense. All we can do is say "better luck next time" and be all that more excited once we DO catch a rare. It is far more rewarding to get one when I've been unlucky rather than seeing a rare every time.


I'm not sure where people are missing my point- it's not just you, you just happened to be the only one to respond directly.

We should all be seeing at least two to three rares (or higher) per opening with the ratios and the way the new delay system works. Will you actually catch it? That's the 7% chance of you competing against other users looking at the same pets. Your chances actually go up if it's a rat or a horse, or a monthly vs event, and go down if it's a highly popular pet.

CS has never been transparent about how and who the system chooses to get to see a rare. I'd like to know how it's done before we go assuming that bots and all these complex theories are the reason that people are saying that that they lack the option to click on one.

Once again, to clarify, we are absolutely owned an explanation of how the system chooses to show pets. We should absolutely have equal chance to click on a rare as everyone else who enters the pound. The comments have all expressed varying degrees that they feel the pound is unfair, and that the chance to try to click on something is not being distributed equally. People are choosing to mainly focus on bots, changing the layout etc- but before these large changes are considered for implementation-

I would like to know how does the pound choose who gets to see the rare+ pets?


(apologies in advance for the long post, i might have gotten carried away)

the odds aren't as straightforward as you make them out to be.
according to the pound rarity data, ~87% of pets are below rare and ~13% are rare+. however, that is just the data for the entire pool, not the distribution on actual user pages or the odds of every individual player. it does not mean everyone always has a 13% chance to get a rare or that 13% of pets on each individual page are rares.

your pound page only shows you 20 pets out of ~1300, which is only about a 1.5% of the pool. i'm not good at calculating probability, but i'm pretty sure the odds of you seeing one, let alone more, rare in that small fraction of the pool are not that high and definitely not a 100%. i assume each of those 20 randomly pulled pets only has a 13% chance of being one of the rares, meaning you have a 13% chance of seeing one, and increasingly smaller chances of seeing more than one (someone who is good at math feel free to correct me, i looked at the formulas for calculating this and they're insanely incomprehensible).

if we suppose there's a 1000 users at the pound right on time for the opening, that is a 1000 randomly generated unique sets of 20 pets. there is an insane amount of possible 20-pet combinations out of a 1300-pet pool, and it is highly unlikely that in a random 1000 sets every such set has a rare in it, considering there's only about ~150 rares in each pound pool, and i think it is even less likely with the pets now being released in waves (though we don't know the distribution of rarities in each wave).
e.g. if the entire 150 is dropped at once, for every person to see one rare each one would have to be shown to at least 7 people at once, but if only 50 rares are released in the first wave, for everyone to see one rare each one would have to be shown to at least 20 people (this is obviously not statistically correct but you get the logic). if everyone were to always be shown 2 or 3 rares on their page, those numbers would go even higher, making the competition for every single rare absolutely impossible for anyone not posessing superhuman speed.

if everything is truly random, we have no way of knowing how many people see any specific pet on their page at the same time. it may be 0, it may be 20. it is possible that one person sees 5 different rares and 5 people see none. random chance on such a scale is pretty much impossible to predict and calculate, and it is as plausible for someone to have a lucky streak of adopting several rares in a row as it is for someone to not even see a single one for months (they might even be the same person at different points in time!). for all we know it might even be possible to see 20 rares at once.

and all of this is only the pure math side of things that can be calculated to a certain degree. there's also tons of variables that are user based and impossible to account for. someone refreshed their page half a second faster than you and took a rare out of the pool, slightly lowering your chance of seeing one. alternatively, a few people took commons, slightly increasing your chance of seeing a rare. more people were at the opening, reducing everyone's chances. less people were at the opening, increasing everyone's chances. popular species, unpopular species etc, etc. there's absolutely no way of knowing what exact odds you will come to on any specific pound opening, and everyone's in the same boat with that. just because someone seems more lucky than you, doesn't mean they have some secret hidden advantage, they simply got lucky.

it is also worth noting that pretty much the only way we know about anyone's luck or the lack of thereof is their own posts. not every user participating in the pound actively uses the "pound pets" thread or any other threads/off-site communities. not every user participating in the threads posts all their catches. we don't know how many pounds each individual user has been to and what percentage of their catches were rare. some people come to every single pound opening and some only catch it once a week. of course, the first group will seemingly have better "luck", while in reality their actual chances are likely equal, but more attempts leads to what seems like a better success rate. we don't know the actual average rate of how frequently users get rares unless we start stalking every single rare in the pound and recording who it went to. we have even less ways to determine how many people simply saw a rare on their page as that is rarely reported and impossible to track.

all that being said, we have no way of knowing what actual mechanisms are at play here, and i doubt we will ever see solid data and algorithms of the pound. cs doesn't like to disclose numbers so all we can do is guess. all my babbling is purely speculation because i can't pass by a good opportunity to google a topic for several hours instead of being productive ;p

tldr: probability is an insane field of mathemathics and it is always more complicated that you think.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby RainbowMama01 » Wed Apr 17, 2024 1:48 am

Fellefan wrote:in my opinion the main "problem" with the pound is that we can see what pets will be available in the next opening. when people spot a high value pet in the upcoming opening alerts are sent out and a lot of people show up making the pound incredibly slow, making it almost impossible for us with slow internet to catch anything good. I don't think increasing the size is going to change this, but making adjustments so NO pets in the pound are visible until it opens would at least do something.


This seems fair to me - I didn't realize that you could "see" the pound pets before it opens, but it makes perfect sense that the pound will be bombarded when a certain pet is spotted. It should be a "surprise" which is the point, I thought? Also, everyone NOT getting on at opening because that is when all the best pets are, is best - spacing out the best pets because as much as I try, my internet NEVER loads immediately and anything I click on within the first page is always gone already. So ... do what you will, but just my thoughts. :)
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby SunstonePhoenix » Wed Apr 17, 2024 1:59 am

Gamezelle wrote:The message "Already taken" appearing live is a really nice and fun add to the Pound.

Although it does confirm what I always believed : people are completely obsessed with the first row, especially the first pet :clap:
It's especially incredible when the message pop-up before the page is fully loaded.

We definitely need pet order to be randomized.


While older pets being on the first row makes it easier, there are a lot of people who use the wl solely to show old rares+ and as such if there is a star they can immediately click. While I wish we could all have a separate WL for pound vs trades, mixing it up will still just give these folks an even bigger advantage, because anyone newer with a lot of common wl pets will have to think. As-is, I can click a pet in the first row and have a miniscule chance at getting an old pet, which is the best chance I'll get at all.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Darkcloud! » Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:08 am

exile. wrote:
(apologies in advance for the long post, i might have gotten carried away)

the odds aren't as straightforward as you make them out to be.
according to the pound rarity data, ~87% of pets are below rare and ~13% are rare+. however, that is just the data for the entire pool, not the distribution on actual user pages or the odds of every individual player. it does not mean everyone always has a 13% chance to get a rare or that 13% of pets on each individual page are rares.

your pound page only shows you 20 pets out of ~1300, which is only about a 1.5% of the pool. i'm not good at calculating probability, but i'm pretty sure the odds of you seeing one, let alone more, rare in that small fraction of the pool are not that high and definitely not a 100%. i assume each of those 20 randomly pulled pets only has a 13% chance of being one of the rares, meaning you have a 13% chance of seeing one, and increasingly smaller chances of seeing more than one (someone who is good at math feel free to correct me, i looked at the formulas for calculating this and they're insanely incomprehensible).

if we suppose there's a 1000 users at the pound right on time for the opening, that is a 1000 randomly generated unique sets of 20 pets. there is an insane amount of possible 20-pet combinations out of a 1300-pet pool, and it is highly unlikely that in a random 1000 sets every such set has a rare in it, considering there's only about ~150 rares in each pound pool, and i think it is even less likely with the pets now being released in waves (though we don't know the distribution of rarities in each wave).
e.g. if the entire 150 is dropped at once, for every person to see one rare each one would have to be shown to at least 7 people at once, but if only 50 rares are released in the first wave, for everyone to see one rare each one would have to be shown to at least 20 people (this is obviously not statistically correct but you get the logic). if everyone were to always be shown 2 or 3 rares on their page, those numbers would go even higher, making the competition for every single rare absolutely impossible for anyone not posessing superhuman speed.

if everything is truly random, we have no way of knowing how many people see any specific pet on their page at the same time. it may be 0, it may be 20. it is possible that one person sees 5 different rares and 5 people see none. random chance on such a scale is pretty much impossible to predict and calculate, and it is as plausible for someone to have a lucky streak of adopting several rares in a row as it is for someone to not even see a single one for months (they might even be the same person at different points in time!). for all we know it might even be possible to see 20 rares at once.

and all of this is only the pure math side of things that can be calculated to a certain degree. there's also tons of variables that are user based and impossible to account for. someone refreshed their page half a second faster than you and took a rare out of the pool, slightly lowering your chance of seeing one. alternatively, a few people took commons, slightly increasing your chance of seeing a rare. more people were at the opening, reducing everyone's chances. less people were at the opening, increasing everyone's chances. popular species, unpopular species etc, etc. there's absolutely no way of knowing what exact odds you will come to on any specific pound opening, and everyone's in the same boat with that. just because someone seems more lucky than you, doesn't mean they have some secret hidden advantage, they simply got lucky.

it is also worth noting that pretty much the only way we know about anyone's luck or the lack of thereof is their own posts. not every user participating in the pound actively uses the "pound pets" thread or any other threads/off-site communities. not every user participating in the threads posts all their catches. we don't know how many pounds each individual user has been to and what percentage of their catches were rare. some people come to every single pound opening and some only catch it once a week. of course, the first group will seemingly have better "luck", while in reality their actual chances are likely equal, but more attempts leads to what seems like a better success rate. we don't know the actual average rate of how frequently users get rares unless we start stalking every single rare in the pound and recording who it went to. we have even less ways to determine how many people simply saw a rare on their page as that is rarely reported and impossible to track.

all that being said, we have no way of knowing what actual mechanisms are at play here, and i doubt we will ever see solid data and algorithms of the pound. cs doesn't like to disclose numbers so all we can do is guess. all my babbling is purely speculation because i can't pass by a good opportunity to google a topic for several hours instead of being productive ;p

tldr: probability is an insane field of mathemathics and it is always more complicated that you think.


This is an amazing post, thank you for taking the time to put all this together! I couldn't find a good place to snip it, because it's all so good! :D
With your points-
I think the pets are definitely being shown to at least 5 people at a time right now, based anecdotally off seeing a pet on my page + seeing who got it + who then posts about having also seen it. Having it up to 20 wouldn't be bad- after all, that's still better then odds you face when a user posts in the adoption forums that they're quitting.

When I mention seeing 2-3 rares, it would be over the course of the delay + pages, so the pool of users would go down as pets are claimed, meaning that the second or third rare that player sees, the chance rate of grabbing it would be (minimally) higher.
I agree that we'll never end up seeing exactly how the pound works, but knowing what the code-method is for choosing who gets the option to try for rares would put to bed a lot of the accusations towards individuals and speculation around botting.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby avaloafe » Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:21 am

why is everyone acting like being able to see the pets in advance is the problem. y’all DO REALIZE that’s been a thing for YEARSSSS. it isn’t new. it isn’t the cause of what everyone is saying. it’s not something that just magically happened during the update. IT ISNT THE PROBLEM.
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Re: We need your feedback: Bigger, less frequent pound openi

Postby Adamented » Wed Apr 17, 2024 4:51 am

Elm wrote:
Adamented wrote:
ryomen wrote:-snip-

agreed. seeing what's in the pound has literally no bearing on what actually shows up in the pound for the users who checked. i check the pound every time and nothing i decided i wanted ever comes up lol. failing to see the "advantage" in that.
everybody's a little too worried about it when it's really just pure dismay that they didn't know they could do that. it affects the actual pound openings zero percent


Knowing what's coming and being able to recognize it in your pool when it shows up makes the world of difference, doesn't it? Is that not the whole point of checking what's coming, to find the valuable ones so you don't miss it if you get the chance at one? Newbies can't do that, neither can anyone who doesn't know this is a thing. That's a clear advantage.


The only advantage (leveling field) that i see here is FOR the newbies. Ive been on this site 10+ years. I know most of the rares if not all. So taking the option of looking at whats in the pound away is only going to hurt newer players. They can look in the pound beforehand and instead of memorizing 15k pets right away they only have to remember what a few look like (if they didnt add them to their wishlist.)

I agree that maybe its not known by the whole community, maybe they could add it to the “did you know” spot in the forums.


Sure but this was a suggestion for compromise, wherein experienced players aren't as blinded as newbies are, but still can't know exactly what's coming until they get their pool.

I'd really prefer that :) NO ONE can see any of the pets and it's completely random. That's what makes random draws fair, it's how lotteries work, and it's been working on other sites for a very long time.


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