COMMUNITY POLL: Rare Monthly Pets

[SupernaturalJem]

It's seems I'm in the minority here, but I really dislike this idea. I don't enjoy hunting for rare outcomes, I just want to complete and enjoy my monthly collections.

I wouldn't mind something like the zebras, maybe a yearly adopt or a small group of them that you have a chance to get. Not as rare as the zebras and still something to look forward to every month or to try to trade for, but not part of the regular litters.

If it's to be done as part of the regular litters, I'd prefer if it was like once or twice a year at most, and even better, on a designated month/s, similar to how the staff litters have their place and we all know when they happen. This would still give a challenge to those who want it, but it'd be limited to a certain time frame, so those who enjoy a more relaxed way of playing would know when to expect the chaos.

I concur. I still haven't gotten the gold gatcha dog OR the August pps lion. They are both on my dreamies list on my trade settings page.

If it's a special type of animal that wouldn't normally be in monthly adopts (like a goat or frog for example), maybe. But I absolutely DO NOT like the idea of one of the regular monthly animals (dogs, cats, monkey, 2nd gen, etc) being rare.

Maybe once or twice a year, in a month that has an event, ie Halloween, Christmas, Summer Vacation, Easter, etc. In those months we already tend to have rares, so adding one more wouldn't be that big of a deal I think. Or, as you suggested, only in the same month every year. The idea of knowing WHEN helps ease the stress as opposed to the idea of never knowing until it's too late. Sometimes life gets busy, you know? And I forget to check in enough to keep up with trade threads. So perhaps my aforementioned suggestion of a monthly rare during a holiday is not the best solution after all (since those times tend to be the busiest times of the year) lol.

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Or here's an idea: Just do it in September only and make just one of the staff pets rare. I always tend to miss at least one of those anyway lol. Disclaimer: This is NOT a serious suggestion. This is a joke.

[Luscitrea]

I think making one staff pet any rarer than another is a bad idea since they're mostly there for the staff to express themselves, and we dont want one to seem more preferable than another

[SupernaturalJem]

I think making one staff pet any rarer than another is a bad idea since they're mostly there for the staff to express themselves, and we dont want one to seem more preferable than another

I was actually joking about that. I guess it's hard to tell in writing when you can't hear someone's tone of voice. Sorry, it's really early here. I woke up far earlier than I wanted to, so I guess I wasn't clear-headed enough to make sure it was clear that I was kidding. It's fixed now though. Funny fact: my very tired eyes read "preferable" as "profitable" at first and I was very confused lol. I need to go back to sleep I guess.

In all seriousness, I feel that rare monthly staff pets would be stressful for a lot of players (myself included). As I said, I still don't have the two previous ones and it's been quite a while. I don't even think I have an extra extremely rare to even trade for them successfully. It took me a very long time just to get the most rare star dog I was missing (a lot longer than most monthlies I miss). But, I feel like now with the added categories where the pps lion and gold gatcha (or at least the lion) are even more rare (or labeled/perceived more rare) than they were previously, they have become even harder to obtain. Adding even more of these types just makes this game more stressful than fun, tbh. It's the rarest ones I almost always miss and it's almost always the best/my favorite of the whole litter lol.

[LunaLate]

@Lemon Coyote it's not winning in the polls, but one of the options was to release a rare every single month. It's option 3!

I disagree that rares are easy to get after a month. Hype can follows pets for a while, it's why we had that topic about regular rare pets that were difficult to trade for: click. The golden gacha dog was mentioned there as needing to overpay and struggling to find someone to trade for it even a year after it was released.

I'd also argue that the monthly litter rare pets, whenever they are released, are going to be different than other hard to come by outcomes in the past. Once this poll closes, most of the player base will be on the lookout for a significantly harder pet. Maybe we will know it when we see it because it will look unique compared to its littermates? My prediction will be hype through the roof for the first hard to come by monthly pet lol, and hype that will echo on for a while.

I also disagree that rares get easier to trade, they almost get more difficult to trade, especially if you don’t have anything old rares and only have this year event rares. The last monthly rare pet, the PPS rare rat, was impossible for me to trade for and it is a rat! The species with the least demand. I finally just got it as a gift but I had no hope of ever trading for it. I don’t want to complain but I have to disagree with people saying that as demand goes down it gets easier to trade. Demand never goes down enough to get a fair trade. Such as a rare from the same year for the in demand rare.
I’m still salty I haven’t been able to get the Valentines lioness from this year with two rares on their wishlist T-T You think with it becoming extremely uncommon its demand would go down but my trades just keep getting canceled.

[Lunacorn]

For those agreeing, how often do you guys actually trade for the high demand rares? Because in my experience almost everyone wants over-pay for a pet that is simply a rare. It makes actual trading a nightmare, and considering the new trade values we’re still trying to recalibrate from that to trade semi-fairly. Even if we didn’t have that ALOT of members don’t know pet values and do not send fair trades again staggering the amount of actual acceptable trades. I don’t want more then what we normally get yearly for this reason. If you aren’t far on your pet wl, I can tell you once you hit a certain point in it that you see few trades. Much fewer that are fair and will actually help you decrease your wl.

{ my best recent example is the Valentine's lioness. I needed two at the time [one for me, one for someone else] and I just waited it out. I ended up just buying both of them for a good C$ deal after maybe a week. when high demand pets drop I either watch the swap threads [if I have an hour or so to spend on it] looking for a reasonable trade or just straight swap that both of us are happy with, or I wait until the next ooh shiny comes out and get a reasonable trade then. the main issue truly is people have to have these scarcer outcomes right now immediately this second instead of just. waiting for them to be revealed as uncommon etc. and they throw absolutely everything they own at the trade threads to get it. that's where you get outrageous stuff like 08s and MAs for one new simple rare. it actually has gotten a tiny bit better over time with so many of us in discussion threads reminding people that it's not worth so much overpay, but there's just a lot of unwillingness to simply wait it out that contributes here. I don't have that kind of fodder to toss at any pet so I just. don't. usually I can get the pets with a few C$ or a handful of pets from earlier in the year once the hype quiets. it's worked for me-- I have to go back all the way to 2018 for a missing outcome that's not a hoard or UR, and it would be further back but I missed said pet in the archive until recently 😂 ♡

{ as for blaming hoarders, let's just not... we pay just as much as everyone else, often more, for our pets, and I believe there's evidence out there that it has little to no effect on overall rarity. a person with twenty BAs or even a hundred BMDs is not singlehandedly making them OMGSR, and that person likely overpaid for most if not all of those pets. collecting is sort of another version of hoarding, too. don't open the can of worms because it's easiest to blame hoarders, please, we do this every time there's the slightest issue with trading 😭

Agree on both your points! When it comes to pets with high demands the demand usually goes down after a few weeks or months after their release. Also yeah I'm pretty tired of people pointing their finger at hoarders, like they're paying the same price as anyone else, sometimes even more.....

[Lunacorn]

@Lemon Coyote it's not winning in the polls, but one of the options was to release a rare every single month. It's option 3!

I disagree that rares are easy to get after a month. Hype can follows pets for a while, it's why we had that topic about regular rare pets that were difficult to trade for: click. The golden gacha dog was mentioned there as needing to overpay and struggling to find someone to trade for it even a year after it was released.

I'd also argue that the monthly litter rare pets, whenever they are released, are going to be different than other hard to come by outcomes in the past. Once this poll closes, most of the player base will be on the lookout for a significantly harder pet. Maybe we will know it when we see it because it will look unique compared to its littermates? My prediction will be hype through the roof for the first hard to come by monthly pet lol, and hype that will echo on for a while.

I also disagree that rares get easier to trade, they almost get more difficult to trade, especially if you don’t have anything old rares and only have this year event rares. The last monthly rare pet, the PPS rare rat, was impossible for me to trade for and it is a rat! The species with the least demand. I finally just got it as a gift but I had no hope of ever trading for it. I don’t want to complain but I have to disagree with people saying that as demand goes down it gets easier to trade. Demand never goes down enough to get a fair trade. Such as a rare from the same year for the in demand rare.
I’m still salty I haven’t been able to get the Valentines lioness from this year with two rares on their wishlist T-T You think with it becoming extremely uncommon its demand would go down but my trades just keep getting canceled.

The longer you play the more pets you're going to get, especially during events where you can even get rares and high demand pets (like 18th of december you are guaranteed atleast one old rare.) I started in 2015 but it didn't take me long before I acquired pets from 09', there are people that overpay hugely for recent high demand pets.. And I'd argue that yeah demand does go down. I recently got offered a long-tail shima and I asked the person if they knew how high demand that pet was and they were like "yeah I know" and they wanted pets that didn't have nearly as high demand/worth from my side. Demand does die down after a while, especially when new high demand pets are released.

[walkswithfae]

I like this idea. This implements "chasers" like in other collectibles but I think they should be one pet per month. If you have a chaser for ever litter, every month they become less of an event and more of an annoyance as everyone scrambles for them. Most other collectibles have one chaser per release which is usually quarterly (and here I'm referencing things like Magic the Gathering and other trading card games and collectible figurines). This keeps up the hype and ensures that people have time to actually figure out what's rare and seek them out.

[Wookieinmashoo]

I don’t think people are fully understanding this.

I’m pretty sure what Simon is saying is that these pets would be rare at most and there wouldn’t be one every single month.
From my understanding, these rare outcomes would only occur a couple times a year. And it’s not like they’re going to be OMGSR. For those who are worried about not being able to get the outcomes, remember that rares from the current year aren’t actually worth that much. They’re SUPER easy to get after the event/current month.
Also agreeing with Holli! The lioness I was easily able to get by just selling an adopt.

-snip-
i also wouldn't mind more pets like the zebras being added. i saw someone suggest the URs being added into the pool like the zebras, and since it's such a low chance anyway i think that would be a good way to put more of those pets into circulation. the special releases really are a pain to get, especially the newer ones with less up for trade.

This is a really interesting idea! It would be a pretty big change but I like it. I’ve been playing for 7 ish years and I’ve only ever seen a handful of people get the zebras. The chances are already so low, so it wouldn’t really affect the rarity IMO. We need more URs in the game

I just went and counted, we have 40 ish UR on the site. I don't think we need more. I'd like to see these pets that are only released on one laggy, very miss-able day to be spread out. Keep the same rule that newbies can't adopt them in the first few months of their account. We already get 2-3 UR pets a year, they're just all released on one day and won't be released again until a year later.

Unless that's what you were saying and I just misread.

[BlueEyedKite]

I can't speak on who you quoted but I am one of the peeps for re-release URs in monthly litters. I wouldn't be asking for new URs but the ones already created dropping at the same rate as the zebras I have adopted the pony/horse litters since May 2009 and never got a zebra so I think it's safe to say any URs that are released in this way are not going to put a dent on their rarity, lol, but it's still a trickle of more in circulation.

Imagine adopting a litter of monthly cats and one is a teacup (the avocado)

[lucifer morningstar]

just echoing what a few others have said over the last few pages, but I dislike the idea of making any monthly outcomes rare. we already get plenty of rare pets from events, and even some of those non-token ones are super hyped and extremely difficult to find (e.g. banner dragon, valentines lioness, golden gacha, etc). I find it ridiculous that to complete a year or species collection I have to fork out massive overpay for a "recent rare" (had to offer 55 C$ for the Halloween dragon, took me over a year to find a golden gacha pup).

in my experience, they do not become easier to find down the road and if it were to happen more often, I don't believe that will dampen the hype any less but rather just create more chaotic trading more often. I find the game difficult enough to collect all event pets on top of many not being able to afford store pets or UR pets. I don't need even more demand, hype, and overpayment for brand new pets that eventually will only hurt players who have even more things that seem unattainable. the trading system is already so difficult as it is, and I fear this would just make it worse.