Does anyone else feel like Demand is killing CS?

[Shaylanstewart]

i completely agree with this! i like trading, but it's impossible to get any good pets. also, i think there should be a dictionary for pet terms, such as "ur," "non," etc because they're really confusing.

completely agree with you, Im a new user and is still confused with some new terms

the demand for cerberus is crazy, i've seen someone in "The: Is this a fair trade Thread?" said that they are worth 7-10 nons

Yep

[A.M.Sleeper]

I don't know too much on what demand can do to a trade, but I know that it's made it harder to get pets I wanted. I've just been following demand since I joined and I never saw it as much of a problem until recently. All of this slang is confusing me as well. (What's a "Non"..?)

[holodog]

I still have no clue what any of the "list" lingo or values are about. Everyone may as well be talking in a completely different language.
It has been frustrating that a good majority of my rare trades since I returned from leaving in 2018 have been completely unfair in terms of rarity, it just doesn't make sense to me. The only way I've been able to get anything is get lucky and find something for slightly less overpay or find a very kind soul (I'm so thankful for fair trades you have no idea). And I keep encountering new things like people who don't think regular old rares have any value because their "demand" is bad and I'm just... it feels like demand completely throws any basic understanding of rarity I had out the window.

This isn't really an issue we can do anything about. People obviously want to get the most out of what they have and unless they're a really nice person, we tend to gravitate towards situations where we gain more out of an exchange because everyone wants more. And of course people see others getting insane value out of their pets and they also want that insane value and keep feeding and feeding and now we're here.

So, yeah I'm gonna be frustrated over it and I'm allowed to express that frustration but there's nothing really that can be done. Nothing that I can come up with anyway.

[hatchspawn]

Even when the list was valid people would still want more because of "demand" (even though the list accounted for demand). I really wish they had a) kept up the list and b) rereleased more "high demand" pets during Advent to help combat the ridiculous about of inflation going on.

But yes, I agree with this. It's made trading for pets of value not really worth the effort. At this point I only visit the site with frequency for events.

The list refers to pets here: Forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3377402

Main list is the highest, then September list, then Advent. It was officially discontinued a couple of years ago, but some people still use it as a metric. In the couple of years prior to that though, a lot of people didn't actually use it (even when they said they did).

[YupItReallyIsMe]

I joined back in 2016 with my heart in my eyes. I absolutely loved this site and the things I could do on it. Now, don't get me wrong, I was usually always found on the roleplay side of the site(which has also died out sadly) but that didn't mean I didn't love a good trade here and there. I was ALWAYS interested in the trading aspect of the site and how some people, especially back then, were just so generous, giving newbies rares and other things that were generally seen as good, or in a newbie's case, amazing.

Fast forward to 2019 when I took a year off from the site. I'm aware the list stuff was going on before then but I never had anything good to trade for it anyways so I tended to avoid the topic. Now that I'm back, it seems like everything is about demand. I don't even know how to tell if my trade is worth it or not and as many of you have said, neither do you. For instance, I happened to have received a Sunjewel during a rerelease a few years back and was SO happy to have it! But when people offer trades and the like, I'm often told that my Sunjewel isn't worth much and I think that bothers me a little. It's an old dog, an OMGSR and I don't see why people don't value it.

It was on the list when it was around, I know that for sure, but demand absolutely trashed the value of it. To me, considering date and rarity, it's one of the best dogs to have on the site but I'm so very wrong according to everyone else. I guess what I'm trying to say is I wish Chickensmoothie could return to the good old days when Rarity was what people went by as opposed to the demand that has risen. I don't even know how to trade anymore and I usually don't for fear of being bamboozled by someone who knows better.

[Velifera]

OMG, YES! I totally agree with everything sad in this first post.

I have been apart of this site since 2013, and that time we traded pets for rarity. Doesn't have so much rules. You see a rare pet and trade for other rare or 2 uncommon for 1 rare and basic rules like this.

Now people are crazy about dates and lists pets. No make any sense to me a 2013 pet worth more than a 2015/2016/2017 pet. Commom 2013 is equal common 2020. I don't know... I simply trade my oldest double pets, without see dates. If someone offer a pet for trade, a pet from my WL, and want some older pet for this... why not?

[Velifera]

Now that I'm back, it seems like everything is about demand. I don't even know how to tell if my trade is worth it or not and as many of you have said, neither do you. For instance, I happened to have received a Sunjewel during a rerelease a few years back and was SO happy to have it! But when people offer trades and the like, I'm often told that my Sunjewel isn't worth much and I think that bothers me a little. It's an old dog, an OMGSR and I don't see why people don't value it.

It doesn't make any sense! Is the same pet! Consider dates are something so so so annoying. Rereleased is the same pet, why should it value less?

[Angelicangel252]

That's just supply and demand for you. The older pets are rereleased every year and the store pets are not. And as demand rises while supply falls, value goes up. That's just how economies are. It's just not feasible to keep value the exact same when everybody and their mother wants a Raven, or a Cerberus, or whatever. Only way to alleviate it would be to reintroduce the animals and make them more common, but it would have to be done through the store.

...Most seem to accept the idea that store pets never get re-released, while other pets do
& therefore store pets will become more rare then any non store pets with time...
Yet, when I offer a Very Rare store pet from 2013 in exchange for a Rare 2010 zodiac dog...
My offer is "unfair" to them?

At the same time, one store pet from 2014 goes for main list pets?!
Really?...
Makes no sense to me.
...& some of the messages are just plain
snarky!
If you dont want to trade, just say no thank you.
There's no need to be rude, especially when what should be a decent offer,
you no longer recognise as being fair?
It's very confusing, & at times frustrating.

I also find it strange how many people claim that they still follow the list, yet all of their pets are worth much more now... Hmm...
Which is it?... Do you follow the list, or is it no longer accurate?...

I'm almost afraid to trade for pets now.
That's a shame, because CS has been an outlet for me for several years.
It's my "happy place" & these vertual pets are a huge part of that. <3
I'm just glad I managed to trade for most of my much loved / most wanted pets while trading still made sense.

That's personal demand for you. And Zodiacs are in rather large demand too, to use your example. The problem with a largely demand based system is there is no set value. It's up, largely, to the person you're trading with. So what's fair to you may be unfair to them. It's a complete luck of the draw. As for the list, people, I think, have more tried to evolve without it. Even before it was discontinued, people said it was rather out of date. Which is really just a sign that we need some form of updated structure back. I strongly believe that, if we had that structure, demand would be curved a bit. And it's not a crime for people to want their fair worth out of pets they have. Supply and demand. If you don't have the supply to appease the demand, then the supply is going to go up in value as a result.

Granted, that isn't going to change that the root of the demand this is going to be the store pets. Because my point still stands: store pets don't get rereleases. There aren't going to be more pumped into the economy unless they do a big store rerelease.

Personally, I've got this idea of having a box similar to the 18th rerelease box, but in the store. It has a single pet from all of the store releases done over the years. It's a limit of one, it costs, I dunno, 25 C$ or something, I'm no price gauge expert, and you can get it once and it'll be a random store pet, everything from the Skelebun to the newest monkey pets.

Of course, then you run the risk of dealing with the latest and greatest RNG loot box controversy, which I really don't want to get into, but it would definitely help the supply and demand problem.

I thought this too, as I was reading this thread. Maybe a limited time offer box, available only on December 18, and with an increased likelihood of getting an older store pet. It only makes sense for this to be implemented side by side with the December 18 one, as they would serve the same purpose, balancing out the demand and the supply a bit.

[Byuller]

I'll start by opening with: I'm so sorry for this long ass totally not intended post, get your glasses and hot coffee on and settle on that I do agree that it used to be more fun before when a VR was worth another VR and not something like x10 times its amount, BUT, this was bound to happen regardless of what the Team/Devs did and let me explain why.

There is a simple reason as to why there cannot be ever a consistent value or "price" for a pet, ye good old word we all hate so much, Demand.
You see, it is not something that only exists and affects CS but it affects our daily life also. You see it unconsciously happen all around you and you don't even notice, take for example food. Something that in mass production would cost the company to create/harvest/process/etc. only something like 0.20 Cents, in reality, you get sold for like 1.5 US/Euro. Why? Demand. Prices of everything, but literally everything, are set and continuously adjusted by the demand for that said product. Did you know that your regular car of 5k Euros in reality costs only something about less than 1k to be produced, yet is sold to you x5 the price to meet demand? If one product is consumed a lot, it makes the company do more and spend more resources, meaning, it'll raise prices to meet the demand for labor, machinery, etc. You only notice this when at your local store your chips suddenly cost 5% more all of a sudden, you curse, not think about why this happens other than the company is just probably greedy and wants more money and end up buying your chips anyway, feeding the circle of demand unconsciously.

Why am I explaining this? Because as much as I'd love to have a perfect world in which we could all just agree to drop weapons at once and be at peace and get along, it's not going to happen. No matter how many threads or posts are made explaining how bad the demand inflation is, or that we should all trade as we did in 2009, it won't happen because greedy and needy people will never cease to exist. The List didn't prevent things spiking in value, the Devs doing the 18 Dec re-releases to keep old pets going to not over inflate the values doesn't help, no matter how much we complain of prices rising and people mindlessly overpaying unnecessarily, it'll never stop, due to demand. Just think of it this way. It isn't that the prices are rising because there are fewer pets released, that isn't the case because with each year more people join with dec 18 pets released more and more rares are injected in CS per account, neither is that there are no people willing to trade pets because they move constantly.

The core issue is that the site back in 2008, 2009, etc. Had a FRACTION of the current total population of CS. The more people find about the website and join in, the more people would start wanting and looking for say a Raven, and since back in the day maybe only 100 of 500 people wanted a Raven and since it was something widely accessible to people there could easily have been more than enough to satisfy that thirst. Nowadays it may be on the Wishlist of 5000 people or something with only maybe 1000 existing (example, obviously numbers are fake for example sake), thus making it harder for people to find one, and when they do find someone with it, they get so many requests and offers for it that they obviously are going to pick the highest offer they can get which fluctuates the prices.

One person starts offering instead of 0.5 Nons for a Raven to attempt to persuade the owner to pick them instead as the one with the highest offer, that person spreads from word of mouth that they were able to overpay for it and get it to other folks that want it. Suddenly everyone is offering 0.5 Nons which becomes the new baseline since obviously if now 10 people are offering you 0.5 Nons for your Raven you're not going to pick someone offering you less. Then, someone gets tired of 0.5 Nons not working anymore as there are too many people doing the same thing and starts offering 1 Non out of desperation, end up getting picked between the crowd, word gets around of this, 1 Non becomes the new standard, and it goes on and on and on until the Raven no longer is valued the insane first overprice from 1 VR to 0.5 Nons, it now is valued at least on 1.5 Nons and it'll probably cost something like 3 Nons in 2 years.

Long story short, even if the devs injected more old rares into the site, it wouldn't really help. It'll maybe make the demand get lower by making it easier for people to find what they're looking for without having to overpay to get a chance to get the pet they want, BUT, this would also make people get less than what they used to, essentially making the effort of collecting and trading wisely obsolete and perhaps even boring when things are easily obtainable. You see, gambling and collecting is very addicting to anyone and at any age and this happens in CS a lot. You gamble with trades to see which one goes though and which doesn't and you always have this splinter in your mind of wanting to finish that gosh dungit collection of yours where you're only missing those 3 pets and aaaaaaaaaaaah!! BOOM, you suddenly overpriced for those 3 pets just to get the collection complete faster feeding into the endless demand circle only to start doing the same with a new collection within a week or so.

There is also the possibility of people just not wanting to let go of the price they want for their pets (like when the Tier list got discontinued and people were secretly hoping prices would go down, yet, everyone kept holding on for their dear life to the original values) and keep trading it for a high price regardless of it being less valued and there are people bound to still get it at overprice anyway. Regardless, many people would get mad that their pets lost their value because they'd be cheap as dirt, I'm certain many collectors that put sweat and tears into getting their dreamies by literally selling everything rage quit when they see a pet they paid 5 Nons for go for 1 09' VR and the issue with trading won't be not being able to find the one pet you're looking for but probably something like finding a bunch of them instead. The reason why pets like Cerbs or Eat Me are not Hoarded or one person doesn't have more than maybe 2 on their account at a time is because they're just so hard to come by. If that barrier was broken, now suddenly the new problem would be how many you can actually start stacking? Propular and pretty pets like those will always be more picked and you'd see hoarders of Ravens everywhere, making Ravens hard to come by regardless of how many you were able to buy or get. We always find a fun way to create problems where there is none, as the amazing greedy humans we all are.

I'm not saying I enjoy the harsh reality of having to literally sell/trade away at least 5 Years of your collection (if lucky) for a single Orange Cerb but the only way this would disappear is that if the site was started anew, and it would be normal at least for the first 3-4 years again before everything would spiral out of control once more because if you give the option for people to buy the pets, those people would monopolize it and create a demand of their own basically telling everyone what to buy their pets for. If everyone was able to pick one dream pet, regardless of rarity, you bet everyone would just pick the currently most expensive one to milk it for all it's worth essentially ruining that pet's value and rising everything else instead or something. If the devs decided to get rid completely of the most demanded/valued pets like the Cerb or Raven, people would just quit and those who stay would monopolize the second-best choices that are the most appealing to people creating new pets of the same value as the ones the devs would take away for those same reasons. There is just no way to fix this.

*Goes back under the sheets to vigorously keep collecting random dwarf hamsters because it's still easy to do, for now...*

[Angelicangel252]

I'll start by opening with: I'm so sorry for this long ass totally not intended post, get your glasses and hot coffee on and settle on that I do agree that it used to be more fun before when a VR was worth another VR and not something like x10 times its amount, BUT, this was bound to happen regardless of what the Team/Devs did and let me explain why.

There is a simple reason as to why there cannot be ever a consistent value or "price" for a pet, ye good old word we all hate so much, Demand.
You see, it is not something that only exists and affects CS but it affects our daily life also. You see it unconsciously happen all around you and you don't even notice, take for example food. Something that in mass production would cost the company to create/harvest/process/etc. only something like 0.20 Cents, in reality, you get sold for like 1.5 US/Euro. Why? Demand. Prices of everything, but literally everything, are set and continuously adjusted by the demand for that said product. Did you know that your regular car of 5k Euros in reality costs only something about less than 1k to be produced, yet is sold to you x5 the price to meet demand? If one product is consumed a lot, it makes the company do more and spend more resources, meaning, it'll raise prices to meet the demand for labor, machinery, etc. You only notice this when at your local store your chips suddenly cost 5% more all of a sudden, you curse, not think about why this happens other than the company is just probably greedy and wants more money and end up buying your chips anyway, feeding the circle of demand unconsciously.

Why am I explaining this? Because as much as I'd love to have a perfect world in which we could all just agree to drop weapons at once and be at peace and get along, it's not going to happen. No matter how many threads or posts are made explaining how bad the demand inflation is, or that we should all trade as we did in 2009, it won't happen because greedy and needy people will never cease to exist. The List didn't prevent things spiking in value, the Devs doing the 18 Dec re-releases to keep old pets going to not over inflate the values doesn't help, no matter how much we complain of prices rising and people mindlessly overpaying unnecessarily, it'll never stop, due to demand. Just think of it this way. It isn't that the prices are rising because there are fewer pets released, that isn't the case because with each year more people join with dec 18 pets released more and more rares are injected in CS per account, neither is that there are no people willing to trade pets because they move constantly.

The core issue is that the site back in 2008, 2009, etc. Had a FRACTION of the current total population of CS. The more people find about the website and join in, the more people would start wanting and looking for say a Raven, and since back in the day maybe only 100 of 500 people wanted a Raven and since it was something widely accessible to people there could easily have been more than enough to satisfy that thirst. Nowadays it may be on the Wishlist of 5000 people or something with only maybe 1000 existing (example, obviously numbers are fake for example sake), thus making it harder for people to find one, and when they do find someone with it, they get so many requests and offers for it that they obviously are going to pick the highest offer they can get which fluctuates the prices.

One person starts offering instead of 0.5 Nons for a Raven to attempt to persuade the owner to pick them instead as the one with the highest offer, that person spreads from word of mouth that they were able to overpay for it and get it to other folks that want it. Suddenly everyone is offering 0.5 Nons which becomes the new baseline since obviously if now 10 people are offering you 0.5 Nons for your Raven you're not going to pick someone offering you less. Then, someone gets tired of 0.5 Nons not working anymore as there are too many people doing the same thing and starts offering 1 Non out of desperation, end up getting picked between the crowd, word gets around of this, 1 Non becomes the new standard, and it goes on and on and on until the Raven no longer is valued the insane first overprice from 1 VR to 0.5 Nons, it now is valued at least on 1.5 Nons and it'll probably cost something like 3 Nons in 2 years.

Long story short, even if the devs injected more old rares into the site, it wouldn't really help. It'll maybe make the demand get lower by making it easier for people to find what they're looking for without having to overpay to get a chance to get the pet they want, BUT, this would also make people get less than what they used to, essentially making the effort of collecting and trading wisely obsolete and perhaps even boring when things are easily obtainable. You see, gambling and collecting is very addicting to anyone and at any age and this happens in CS a lot. You gamble with trades to see which one goes though and which doesn't and you always have this splinter in your mind of wanting to finish that gosh dungit collection of yours where you're only missing those 3 pets and aaaaaaaaaaaah!! BOOM, you suddenly overpriced for those 3 pets just to get the collection complete faster feeding into the endless demand circle only to start doing the same with a new collection within a week or so.

There is also the possibility of people just not wanting to let go of the price they want for their pets (like when the Tier list got discontinued and people were secretly hoping prices would go down, yet, everyone kept holding on for their dear life to the original values) and keep trading it for a high price regardless of it being less valued and there are people bound to still get it at overprice anyway. Regardless, many people would get mad that their pets lost their value because they'd be cheap as dirt, I'm certain many collectors that put sweat and tears into getting their dreamies by literally selling everything rage quit when they see a pet they paid 5 Nons for go for 1 09' VR and the issue with trading won't be not being able to find the one pet you're looking for but probably something like finding a bunch of them instead. The reason why pets like Cerbs or Eat Me are not Hoarded or one person doesn't have more than maybe 2 on their account at a time is because they're just so hard to come by. If that barrier was broken, now suddenly the new problem would be how many you can actually start stacking? Propular and pretty pets like those will always be more picked and you'd see hoarders of Ravens everywhere, making Ravens hard to come by regardless of how many you were able to buy or get. We always find a fun way to create problems where there is none, as the amazing greedy humans we all are.

I'm not saying I enjoy the harsh reality of having to literally sell/trade away at least 5 Years of your collection (if lucky) for a single Orange Cerb but the only way this would disappear is that if the site was started anew, and it would be normal at least for the first 3-4 years again before everything would spiral out of control once more because if you give the option for people to buy the pets, those people would monopolize it and create a demand of their own basically telling everyone what to buy their pets for. If everyone was able to pick one dream pet, regardless of rarity, you bet everyone would just pick the currently most expensive one to milk it for all it's worth essentially ruining that pet's value and rising everything else instead or something. If the devs decided to get rid completely of the most demanded/valued pets like the Cerb or Raven, people would just quit and those who stay would monopolize the second-best choices that are the most appealing to people creating new pets of the same value as the ones the devs would take away for those same reasons. There is just no way to fix this.

*Goes back under the sheets to vigorously keep collecting random dwarf hamsters because it's still easy to do, for now...*

I disagree. Yes, people would try hoarding. Yes people would get less for those rarer store pets than they used to. Yes some would wish they had waited before they traded several nons for one (even tho if they had, the problem wouldn't be there to be fixed, and the price wouldn't have risen to be lowered, so...........moot point?)
But no, they wouldn't become dirt cheap. And no the fun wouldn't end, people would just be able to focus on quality over value-by-popular vote. Right now all you see on the trading threads is "nons, ex-lists, Raven, Drink Me, skelebunny.... etc"
From what I saw in this thread, a lot of people don't even like their designs all that much, they just fall into the pit of "these pets are getting rarer and rarer, and people go insane over them, I better throw all my resources at that". Regular players (without c$) wouldn't be able to afford even one 2010 pet, let alone '08 and '09s without a REALLY lucky Pound strike or December 18. Implementing something similar for the store pets should be only logical.
I don't understand why "restarting the site/starting a new site" is your go-to solution instead of letting a handful of pets' worth be decreased by a margin so that people won't start quitting disheartened because the site they used to love has changed for the (subjective?) worse.
Granted, any fixes the devs implement should be carefully planned because we don't want another Gaia Online catastrophe.