Does anyone else feel like Demand is killing CS?

[Shian]

I'm an ancient member who is feeling so out of the loop anymore. I have no idea what anything is worth anymore and don't honestly have the ambition to even try and figure it out.
Nobody seems to actually enjoy the pets anymore. They all just run around grabbing everything up and trading back and forth like we're on Wall Street.
People refer to their pets as 'rares' and 'very rares' and 'uncommons' etc.
Nobody seems to actually see the pets anymore. Just rarity tags.

So, yeah, Demand has killed CS for me.
For the first time in 11 years, I'm missing pets and I'm numb about it. Despite the hundreds and hundreds of dollars I've sunk into this site I just can't care anymore.

This. I'm done. For the past two or three years, trading has been utterly and entirely exhausting. Everyone is so focused of every little drop of value that they can squeeze out of pets. There are no fair trades any more, it's just "how much of a loss can I take?" People don't see the pets anymore. It's just trading stock to get to whatever the next goalpost is.

For the past two years, if I ever dared to try and find whatever common missed outcome of the month was, my trade partner always, always edits to an uncommon from 2015 or whatever unnecessary loony nonsense that I happened to have in my trade folders. Like everyone needs to be punished for missing an outcome instead of just "Hey, here's a common that's the same species from last month." Whatever happened to that?

Just finding current missing outcomes takes way too much time and energy for what should be a simple swap and this carries all the way up the chain.

[Asvoria]

This. I'm done. For the past two or three years, trading has been utterly and entirely exhausting. Everyone is so focused of every little drop of value that they can squeeze out of pets. There are no fair trades any more, it's just "how much of a loss can I take?" People don't see the pets anymore. It's just trading stock to get to whatever the next goalpost is.

Yes. By all means, it pains me to say that this is absolutely true.
Please, can we just swap fairly or may I trade up without adding one of my kidneys just because I mentioned that I am missing this pet?
* sighs *

[Anastasia]

I'm an ancient member who is feeling so out of the loop anymore. I have no idea what anything is worth anymore and don't honestly have the ambition to even try and figure it out.
Nobody seems to actually enjoy the pets anymore. They all just run around grabbing everything up and trading back and forth like we're on Wall Street.
People refer to their pets as 'rares' and 'very rares' and 'uncommons' etc.
Nobody seems to actually see the pets anymore. Just rarity tags. :(

So, yeah, Demand has killed CS for me.
For the first time in 11 years, I'm missing pets and I'm numb about it. Despite the hundreds and hundreds of dollars I've sunk into this site I just can't care anymore.

This. I'm done. For the past two or three years, trading has been utterly and entirely exhausting. Everyone is so focused of every little drop of value that they can squeeze out of pets. There are no fair trades any more, it's just "how much of a loss can I take?" People don't see the pets anymore. It's just trading stock to get to whatever the next goalpost is.

For the past two years, if I ever dared to try and find whatever common missed outcome of the month was, my trade partner always, always edits to an uncommon from 2015 or whatever unnecessary loony nonsense that I happened to have in my trade folders. Like everyone needs to be punished for missing an outcome instead of just "Hey, here's a common that's the same species from last month." Whatever happened to that?

Just finding current missing outcomes takes way too much time and energy for what should be a simple swap and this carries all the way up the chain.

Yeah its crazy how people feed into demand just because they can. Even date swapping is crazy hard right now...I completely understand if someone has an original date pet and they want to keep it for that reason, but so many people have turned down my offers only for the reason that I'm not offering enough "according to demand." I completely agree how you said people don't see the pets anymore. It's really just about how much value you can squeeze out for a pet.

[Alyssa99]

Idk if it’s necessarily because of demand or not, but I’ve found it hard even trading for older commons now, and even though I choose my offer carefully to make sure it’s fair. And then the trade recipient has those pets open in trade groups, so you’d think that they’d accept your perfectly fair trade for their tradeable pets, right? NOPE. It’s literally all about trying to see if they can get someone to overpay. I overpaid on a 2011 uncommon once that wasn’t even a high demand one from what I know of and the person still said no. You can hardly trade for store pets from only two years ago anymore. It’s annoying. Why can’t people just be nice and accept fair trades like they used to? We should make a trade forum specifically for people who actually want to trade the right way, instead of having to constantly search around for someone that won’t cancel a fair trade on open pet groups.

[☠puppy gutz!☠]

i'm not sure if it's about demand but the trade economy tanked recently. i've been getting bad trades even from older players that are all super unfair to me and i can't trade ANYTHING anymore demand is definitely part of it, but uncommons and under dont usually get much demand anyways and it's hard to trade THOSE off too

edit with something i thought of: demand is a BIG part of a trade economy and a bit of inflation due to demand is healthy. h o w e v e r, the issue with pet demand is that it tanked the trade economy on here entirely and it's almost impossible to get a fair trade at ALL, even for lower value pets.

[Alyssa99]

The store pet rule is one of the reasons why I kind of get annoyed with CS because it's like what's the point in trying to complete your collection if you will never get the store pets you need because either the people who have them are hoarding them or they are looking for extreme overpay because they overpaid an excessive amount and it just becomes a cycle of people wanting more and more overpay.

I feel like there should be some sort of store pet December 18th kind of thing once a year and instead of it being a free release you'd pay a certain amount of C$ to adopt from the box. You'd get a randomly generated older store pet or something I dunno and it being a type of December 18th thing you can only adopt once. At least I feel that it wouldn't be as unfair to users as it would be and it would help more of the store pets to go around, isn't that why URs are rereleased every year? I feel like it would help with demand and it would help the site gain more money since people would want to buy C$ more.

I dunno I feel like newer users are being punished for not being on the site when it first started so they won't ever get the store pets if they are looking for a dreamie or just hoping to complete their collection. I get that it seems unfair to those who were actually there at the start but it's kind of unfair to the newer users too, at least that's how I feel.

Same, I have so many store pets in my wishlist right now, but I can’t even get the deer from a couple years ago because people are hoarding store pets to try and trade them for list pets, instead of nicely trading them to someone who wants the pet for what it is and is giving a fair offer.

I see people with maybe 20 of the same store pet open for trade. You can’t spare just one for someone who’s been searching everywhere for it? I mean come on.

[Sa⸸an]

Im back. I have. 2 OMG so rares, the Banana and the Squid, both unreleased pets. No raven. I think im gonna stay off the trade forums for a while, since it feels like those are the ones who take it to heart and treat it like martial law. I agee with Dolly, on main premise, that its enscapable, like shinies mythicals or legendaries in pokemon, or the new animal crossing villagers that dont have amiibo cards, theres gonna be a demand, you cant avoid, the but the trading community just takes it to far.

Its bugged to the point once ive decided once i got my main dreamies, im switching to the art community and doing art exclusively for pets. I have about four dreamies, like I right now i can acheive all of them.

[Osborn]

see, this is something i've wanted to talk about for a long time, but i don't really feel like i can put everything i'm feeling into words.

people are so focused out of getting value out of their pets simply because of demand, and only demand. pets that are worth the three month rule by rarity go for mid advents, or higher than that. it's simply insane. i can understand demand taking it up a rare or two, but several? that's a lot. it's normal to want the absolute maximum value out of something but it feels like trading has become less about pet collecting because people like the pets, it feels more like people are trading because they like piling up more and more pet value.

the pps dragon cat and shima longtail are good examples of that. i've seen people trade several mid advents for both of these pets. for the pps dragon cat? i've seen it go for a toxic, which of course, is insane given it's a 2014 store pet and store pets that are older and of course, worth more (2013, 2012, 2011 stores) don't even go for the amount that the cat does, simply because demand.

then there are pets that are omgsr, and have been omgsr, that go for a mere fraction of their worth. mint tess horse? ur grapes? ur rat? the unickorn? ur bw? july pps? ur banana? there are others. whereas pets worth about the same (ur tiger) easily fetch overpay. i understand that these pets are more desired, however, grapes get a sorbet and the ur tiger easily fetches 6 nons.

i get that not everyone will agree with me, but demand is a ridiculous issue and ruins it for new players. it'll never go away, that's the problem, so it's hardly worth even complaining about at this point. i've wanted some pets for years but because of demand and pets being "worthless" due to it brings a lot of trouble. the trading system is extremely messed up and complicated to understand. i find it unfortunate that you can offer extreme overpay for a pet, but you still won't be able to get it simply because people want it more even though the value is significantly less.

another thing - zebras. they're, value wise, are the most valuable pets (with the exception of the mountain zebra). however, they get 1-1.5 nons? isn't that a bit ridiculous? but yeah, demand greatly affects the site, unfortunately. we can't control it. there isn't much we can do. unless everyone decided to just cut out demand with trading, it will stay the way it is, or get worse.

people are still going to trade omgsrs for very rares, people are still going to keep trading 3 nons for the bee even though by rarity it is now worth less. there is always going to be demand and unfortunately for most people they will not be able to get the pets that they want no matter how hard they work because of demand values. if you don't trade by demand values you're not likely to get anywhere.

even as ridiculous as some people think demand is, there's nothing anyone can do about it because shima longtails are still going to get several advents, the pps dragon cat is just going to go up and up in rarity, the raven is going to fetch more and more nons (i remember when it went for 1-1.5, now i see it go for 3), and the rarest pets on the site are only going to get fractions of their worth.

demand in a trading economy is normal, it is found on other trading sites, not just chicken smoothie. at this point it's getting to the point where only the "rarest" users can afford certain pets or items.

it's disappointing, but unavoidable. to an extent, you can see it as killing the site. it's a pet collecting website and if you're not the oldest and the rarest user it's very hard to get anything. december 18th does of course help, i think it's a necessary event to occur since it helps recirculate older and rarer pets.

i don't really know how to conclude this, but we need to remember that there's hardly anything that can be done about the matter because no matter how hard some people try, demand will never be out of the question and some users are not going to spare their pets unless they get "demand value".

[Sa⸸an]

I can think one way to throw a wrench in the system. Rerelase the stores on Dec 18. That happened once? And it was a mistake. A good mistake. Do it again, and dont... Fix the mistake. Ever. That was a good mistake.

[Akele]

I've been here since late 2008, and I've basically given up on trading. I'm considering redoing my wishlist to only include last month's missing outcomes, and giving up on my older dreamies. Don't get me wrong - I love CS, otherwise I would've quit a long time ago. The pets are beautiful, the people are friendly, I enjoy the staff. But the economy of this site is nuts! Other sites talk about CS's trading system as what to NOT strive for, btw. Which is always embarrassing. I was talking to a friend IRL about the different pet sites we enjoyed, and I mentioned CS. She made a face. And then told me she'd heard that trading for pets is brutal. She asked me if that was true, and I was like... Well yeah. It is. So. Um.

Anyway. I don't know if there's a solution, or if I just have to get with the times and adapt. But I do miss pets being more than a rarity tag. And pets not having crazy demand. For now... I'm just gonna go after my monthly outcomes and this month's missed events, and like.... Hope someone doesn't ask for a 2011 uncommon in return.