Would anyone be interested in a CS Rarity "calculator"?

[aluminumPP]

I created a CS account just a week ago since my wife was getting back into in after a really long hiatus.
I had a hard time understanding rarities and all the nuances that go into what's fair and isn't fair when trading. I read lots of wikis, sticky posts, etc. There are so many factors like year, set, whether it's a staff pet, what set they're from, demand for certain animals... that make it hard to gauge the value of these pets. I got tired of referring to old threads, looking at other peoples calculations and conversions that didn't seem to be consistent with each other, posting on the "is this a fair trade" thread (Well I don't post there, my wife does. I spent all my time making this lol).

So I created my own little program where I would put in the rarity of the pets I would be trading vs the pets I would receive from another user, and it tells me whether or not it's a fair trade, and what pets (and their rarities) needed to be added in order to make it fair (Ex. if a trade is unfair, 20 OMG commons , 5 commons, 3.33 uncommons etc. should be added to the trade). All formulas use the numbers that are provided by CS in determining rarity.

Simply put, the program determines if a trade is fair based solely on the mathematical value of how CS determines rarity and doesn't take into account things like year, so this program is if you want a quick, at a glance determination so you don't have to dig and do your own research or wait a few hours for someone's response when consulting others.

Well my wife made her own little re-introduction post mentioning my enthusiasm (addiction) to the site and how I made this program as a result. She's gotten a couple messages mentioning it so it seems like it's garnered some interest. Because of how simplistic it is I was just going to use it for myself but my wife told me that I should definitely post about it.

So yeah, is this something that people would want?



Edit: 7/13/2020
I've gotten a lot of great feedback here so far. Even if you don't agree with me, I would love to continue hearing everyone's opinions!

Recently I've stumbled upon a very recent thread titled "Do you miss the Rares list?" which seem to have a lot of differing opinions. What's interesting to me is that there are a lot of older players who also seem to have issues with the way that trading is currently being handled. I thought I'd make a compilation of these posts for those that are interested, and to spark some more conversion for anyone that would like to give some input.

If your post is up here and you're not comfortable with that, just let me know and I'll remove it.


Compilation of Opinions on the Current State of Trading

Recently I've been watching threads and I've seen a lot of people saying they're struggling to trade and they miss the list
I just gotta say that I miss the list as without it people are following different guides and I'm not sure what to value what at
I want to see if the majority of people miss the list as a guide to follow. In my opinion, it would be really cool if the community came together and worked towards a new list, moving up pets that should have been valued higher, moving down pets that should have been valued lower, and adding pets that should have been there in the first place. Anyway that's it I just want to see what people think of trading higher value pets without the list and if they miss it.

TL;DR: I miss the list but don't want it back. I like having multiple guides available, but people on the FTT or "how much is this pet worth" threads need to start stating which guides they used for their advice.

Long/complete reply:
While I do miss it I don't think it should be brought back. I like the fact that there are multiple guides being used and that people have many options on how to trade now, my issue with how things are at the moment is with how people express their opinions.
Some people can be quite harsh and act like the only guide that's right is the one that they use while in fact there are many guides that can considered right as well.
There is also no transparency in the FTT, the people giving advice don't usually state which guide their advice is based on which makes the FTT extremely unreliable. Let's imagine someone uses the rarity guide and asks for advice on a trade, but the person who replied uses the rares list and doesn't mention that. The advice given would be incorrect based on what the person who asked for the advice uses as a guide.
The same goes for the "how much is this pet worth" thread.
I've also run into people who change which guides they use for a trade based on what gives more profit which isn't against the rules, but not really great either.
All my issues with how the trading situation is rn can be solved by people just clearly stating which guides they use so I don't personally think we should try to make one single guide that's used as the norm again

I agree that there were a lot of problems with the list and something had to change, but I also feel like trading high-value rares is just as messed up as before. Half of the people still follow the list while others value things just how they want I feel like? Which I guess is their right, especially when it comes to demand, but I feel like everything is just confusing and a lot of things are becoming really inflated.
Just my opinion based on what I've seen. And I don't know what the solution is lol rip

I'm not really sure that the list is truly gone. Most users who trade for high demand pets still use it. I think it's still around, and it's even more flawed. Like a bunch of other users said, the list was already flawed due to greedy moderators (of the list, not the sites). It also attempted to measure demand of its time, which has changed in the years since. When you compare it to today's attempts, you see something totally different. For example, WWA, which was under the gap on the Main, isn't even mentioned in the Demand Data Cloud. And no one would likely trade it for a Balloon, even though they were on the same tier on the List.

I think the solution is to release more data to users, and it deeply frustrates me that mods won't release more detail on rarities. I think they should say how many of a certain pet there were on the site and how many users have that pet on their wishlist. It could be placed under the rarity bar and above the "Add to Wishlist" button. Then we could quantify both demand and rarity.

I don't really understand why such data isn't already available. I suppose many users would (intentionally or not) exaggerate the importance of such data, but compared to today's nebulous, I think it would decrease the rarity exaggerations.

I hope that makes sense! Feel free to ask me for more information.

Edit 2: 7/13/2020
Some links and resources to where I've found my information

"Understanding rarities" on CS Wiki - Refers to an old post that Nick made explaining the statistical values of each rarity (2009)


"We've updated our rarity measurements!" by Nick - A post from Nick explaining the changes that were made to how rarities are determined. The post touches on the rarity "inflation" that was going on, and differentiating between an "active" and "inactive" user. It doesn't seem to mention anything about changes in the statistical values that he had mentioned in his original post from 2009 (2012)

"Re: What's up with Rarity? We We want to explain" by Nick - Nick provides an explanation of how rarities can rise with the creation of new accounts, and drop when accounts become inactive. This potentially supports my idea that rarities can drop, but never further than its original rarity assignment. (2014)

[mitts]

i would be interested! sometimes you never get a response on the is this a fair trade thread;;

[Cavus]

Bump for those who may be interested! :,)

[CHIMINGSOUL]

Interest over here

[Cavus]

Bump for those who may be interested! :3

[Wookieinmashoo]

This was brought to my attention and I'm interested. I do believe dates do matter, but not nearly as much as people think it usually does.

[aluminumPP]

This was brought to my attention and I'm interested. I do believe dates do matter, but not nearly as much as people think it usually does.

I have a serious issue with dates and how people perceive them. I asked my wife so many questions about dates and why they matter, did a lot of reading, and now that I know more it makes even less sense of why people value it so much. It's one thing to have a personal preference for older pets, but many people seem to objectively believe that older pets are automatically "better" when it's not (to my understanding)

If you take a rare pet from 2020 and compare it to a rare from 2012, most people would think that the 2012 is "worth" more when mathematically that wouldn't be the case.

Pets that are older go up in rarity over time, but they can go down when people log back in after being inactive, but it will never go down in rarity past it's original assignment. If a pet from 2012 is rare, it could have started as an uncommon and became rare over time, but that would also mean that if a lot of old users can log back in and easily have to go back to uncommon, but never lower than that

Compare that to a pet in 2020 that is already a rare, it can only go up in rarity, has the potential to go back down to a normal rare, but never lower than that (minus rereleases). So statistically, that 2020 rare pet should be considered "more valuable" than the 2012 pet, but most people don't think that way. I could be wrong so anyone feel free to correct me, but to my understanding this is how CS determines rarity

[Bilaz]

^It’s not just about the pets on active accounts, what you’re saying is correct when it’s about *rarity*
Another thing that factors into the value is *availability*
You’ll notice if you hoard any common pet that the older it is the harder it is to find, yet if you’re looking for any recent event rare they’re in everyone’s trade groups. This is because as the pets are traded around and more time passes, more and more get put in locked groups, either collection or hoard groups.
Even though they’re locked, they’re still on active accounts, so they do factor into rarity, but because older pets are harder to find they’re worth more. Does that make sense?

I however don’t agree that it factors as much as a lot of people think it does, I think double-ing it per year is a bit much, especially if they also value rarity jumps as 2 for 1.
I’d rather value a VR as 4 rares and make less of a drastic year jump, I value 2020 - 2018, 2015 - 2017, etc. around the same tbh

[Tailish]

This sounds really interesting! I do have one question though.

All formulas use the numbers that are provided by CS in determining rarity.

I was wondering which numbers these are? I was under the impression that CS doesn't release exact rarity data (which is lowkey about 75% of the reason I haven't made a calculator for myself).

[LilyHorse]

That sounds so cool!