New Trading Standards Discussion (please join in!)

[Another World]

If we can I think we should take this chance to update the valuing everything in 09 rares system too ^^ I swear I feel like thats been the method since like 2010 lol. We only have 16 2009 rares (+ 6 extended releases and 2 from 08, for a total of 24 pets) when there used to be hundreds; almost everything from 2009 is at least VR now, plus they're just super old

If we do go the counting things as 1 standard year route again, we should move to 2010 or 2011. We have around 433 2011 rares or 348 2010 rares now and those would be more accessible as the default than 09s at this point

I also do like the 5 year rule. I've been going by a vague personal 3-4 year-ish rule myself with rare pet swaps before, and I think 5 works now with how many new rarities we have and 15+ years worth of pets

for anyone interested in giving a reply, how would you feel about creating a new base system for values something like this?

if there is an OMGSR special release within a given year, what if we valued that based on rares from the same year? instead of trying to define everything based on one type of rare from one year (like everything always being valued by '09 rares?.)

for example, what if we said that an OMGSR from 2009 was worth something like 100 rares from 2009? and a 2010 OMGSR was worth 100 rares from 2010?

if we applied this as a standard, like, 100 rares is equal in value to a pet you have a chance of pulling in that year's dec 18th boxes, then we could tweak it up or down for pets that are either event or month releases that ended up with that label, or for store pets that are known to have higher demand and rarity over time.

Just wanted to jump in and say that I LOVE this idea! Maybe store pets can be something like 5 rares of the same year, or whatever people think is fair. Maybe 5 for a store rare, 10 for a store VR, 15 for a store ER? Just brainstorming!

I agree with both of these, I think also maybe instead of it being general 5 years, since other users pointed out it feels weird if you can do 2023 for 2018 and then 2018 for 2013, it would be better to have specifics 2009-2013, 2014-2018, 2019-2023 w maybe then the cusp years being a bit easier to trade

[Sashtato]

@LavenderRain Oh awesome, because I started one for the 5 year gap and I think I'm just gonna have to leave that to the professionals LOL

Also, I think valuing it as somewhere between (as in a 2017 is equal to a 2016-2018) makes more sense when it comes to trading. The chart I started was based on grouping them the other way though, which makes the most sense for creating a standard pricing system, so I'm not sure what others think but I don't know which would be easiest to implement.

Just because with the chart I was making a 2015 was the same as a 2017, but then going from 2017 to 2018 had a price change, which seemed weird. But maybe that would be okay? It feels reminiscent of how odd the 3-month rule feels that way (why does one month make such a difference, ya know?)

[Sashtato]

I agree with both of these, I think also maybe instead of it being general 5 years, since other users pointed out it feels weird if you can do 2023 for 2018 and then 2018 for 2013, it would be better to have specifics 2009-2013, 2014-2018, 2019-2023 w maybe then the cusp years being a bit easier to trade

This is a good suggestion too. I personally think I'll be very lax with date differences but yeah, I know a lot of people have felt uncomfortable with too big of gaps

[smorestxllison]

I'll be swapping pets of the omgsc-vuc relatively the same as normal--1:1 within 3 years and 3 rarities (i.e. the most extreme I would do is a vc for an uc, a 2016 for a 2018, etc.

For my Rare and up pets, I've marked in my groups which ones just got shifted from UC all the way up to R instead of VUC/EUC categories, as I value them less than pets that were already established as rare. Honestly I'm open to negotiations on most things! I do think that the new rarity system complicates the list values a bit, as these will now be extremely demand based with the huge increase in VRs becoming ER and OMGSR pets

[LavenderRain]

Oh I'm nowhere near a professional, I just saw that C$ hadn't been talked about much yet and made my own chart to try and figure it out xD

So here are the two charts, one is the general C$ value for every year (Which is what you would use if doing the between years, 2017= 2016-2018), and a 3 year gap version with the years preset together

Interestingly this chart actually works almost seamlessly with the idea of Store pets being worth 5 rares of the same year too! ^^

Note: for the 3 year gap, there will always be 1 year extra, so I compiled 2020-2023 altogether since the most recent years have the lowest value changes anyways. Perhaps once 2024 rolls around it'll be put in a 2 year gap with 2023?

[Palimpsest]

I'll put my two cents in to echo what some people have said about rigidity. Whatever the community ends up doing, I hope there's enough variation left in the margins that there's less room for hate around trading methods. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a standard for fairness (I think there should be something we more or less agree on) - what I'm trying to say is that there's more grace where the lines are blurred.

I'd like to feel more comfortable putting trade offers out there, and not having people be angry if it's not to their understanding of fairness - I'd much prefer to be able to just casually negotiate with someone based on how they value things. I think someone earlier in the thread stated much more eloquently how they expect we will always have to make room for people's individual judgements and desires.

So I think what I'm saying here is, if someone does write up a guide or suggest a new standard based on community vote and discussion, I'd like it if several different widely used trading methods were suggested. Like saying, many people agree on the 3 year trade rule as fair, although there's some variation.
Personally I know I won't trade exactly to a 3 year. I'm much more likely to feel like 3-5 year as a range is fine, and where I land in that range will depend on who I'm trading with, what they value, and what years we are working with. If I'm trading a 2016 rare, I'd prefer to trade it for a 2018 or 2019 one, but if someone has a 2020 rare then I might go for that too.

Now getting into extremely rare and omgsr is beyond my understanding, so I'm not speaking to that, and I'll definitely rely on y'all who understand it better to help me trade fairly in the rare times I do go there.
I'd just like it if multiple ways of trading were made clear to people who might be new or returning to a new system, and looking for a guide, since that also establishes the community values and who we are going to see as trading in a respectful manner.

I don't know if that actually works practically? But that's my two cents and hopefully it helps generate discussion.

[SolarSonnet]

As someone coming from the opposite perspective..

I really want a new "rares list". I want more categorization of values like what a "non" or a "MA" is.

My brain works best when I know the 'exact' values of things, it functions really well with hard rules, numbers, and systems, and not very well with the idea of a fluid spectrum of trade values. The math makes trading easy. "This pet is worth 1-1.5n, and your pet is worth 1n, would you be willing to add to 1.25n?" Just works really well, and a more fluid trading system would not work at all for me, I'd hope people would come up with rules because I wouldn't be trading until then. It's why I'm even on this thread tbh.

Also, maybe a hot take, but I think it should be super ridiculously hard to get a 2008 rare when you're just starting out.
16,000 2023 Rares sounds about right, simply because the number is so absurd that you come to the realization very quickly that you need to find another method to get your hands on the pets you want. It makes you explore the site and trading methods more, makes you look at events and see, "Wow, people are trading tokens for a lot, maybe I should skip out on trading in some of these for the new pets, and trade my tokens for the older pets or C$ people are offering instead." It makes you check out the pound more frequently, or maybe trade your pets for C$ instead of for other pets, because it's a lot easier to make 35-50 C$ on commons than it is to directly trade for an 09 rare. It can make you develop skills, like signature or forum coding, or do art, or writing, or whatever else, and potentially use those developed skills to get pets or C$. It immerses you into the CS Community.

I think it's good to have "Dreamies" and a huge, unrealistic goal that you set at the end of the road. "I want THAT pet." Because that's part of what keeps people on CS. It's what keeps them trading. And in the process, it can get them to venture into the forums where they otherwise may have never gone.

I think that's an important part of the experience on this website. Having your pet dreamies makes you develop skills and explore the website for ways to get them. It makes you find community in CS, and develop friend groups, and I think that's just a huge part of it. I wouldn't have had quite a few of the experiences I've had to this day without having a CS Dreamie, and without that Dreamie being ridiculously hard to trade for when I was a new player.

[Loelya]

I really want a new "rares list". I want more categorization of values like what a "non" or a "MA" is.

My brain works best when I know the 'exact' values of things, it functions really well with hard rules, numbers, and systems, and not very well with the idea of a fluid spectrum of trade values. The math makes trading easy. "This pet is worth 1-1.5n, and your pet is worth 1n, would you be willing to add to 1.25n?" Just works really well, and a more fluid trading system would not work at all for me, I'd hope people would come up with rules because I wouldn't be trading until then. It's why I'm even on this thread tbh.

I think the only potential problem with this sort of thing is that there's no possible way for a user-made guide to be 100% accurate. :0c even with good intentions and common goals, that's why a lot of guides/lists/etc out there specify to try to avoid using those threads as absolute law. I think since there will always be at least some subjectivity between pet values, it might be good to have a bit more flexibility, and maybe not try to set out specifically to engineer something that's very rigid from the get-go. but I do think having a sense of "general" values can be very helpful! and I think something like a "3 year rule" being established or figuring out a broad value for high-demand pets (maybe that we can count in rares? or by some other method?) could bring in enough specificity that then as a community we can work on giving consistent advice and drawing consistent conclusions in places like the "pet worth" or "fair trades" threads. ^^ like a balance between hard rules vs fluidity and flexibility.

I do agree with you though that maybe our goals shouldn't necessarily be that all pets be achievable from early on in the game, I also think that having "big goals" to achieve can really breathe a lot of life into a site like this.

[SolarSonnet]

I really want a new "rares list". I want more categorization of values like what a "non" or a "MA" is.

My brain works best when I know the 'exact' values of things, it functions really well with hard rules, numbers, and systems, and not very well with the idea of a fluid spectrum of trade values. The math makes trading easy. "This pet is worth 1-1.5n, and your pet is worth 1n, would you be willing to add to 1.25n?" Just works really well, and a more fluid trading system would not work at all for me, I'd hope people would come up with rules because I wouldn't be trading until then. It's why I'm even on this thread tbh.

I think the only potential problem with this sort of thing is that there's no possible way for a user-made guide to be 100% accurate. :0c even with good intentions and common goals, that's why a lot of guides/lists/etc out there specify to try to avoid using those threads as absolute law. I think since there will always be at least some subjectivity between pet values, it might be good to have a bit more flexibility, and maybe not try to set out specifically to engineer something that's very rigid from the get-go. but I do think having a sense of "general" values can be very helpful! and I think something like a "3 year rule" being established or figuring out a broad value for high-demand pets (maybe that we can count in rares? or by some other method?) could bring in enough specificity that then as a community we can work on giving consistent advice and drawing consistent conclusions in places like the "pet worth" or "fair trades" threads. ^^ like a balance between hard rules vs fluidity and flexibility.

I do agree with you though that maybe our goals shouldn't necessarily be that all pets be achievable from early on in the game, I also think that having "big goals" to achieve can really breathe a lot of life into a site like this.

I agree that, on a lot of levels, there are huge problems with things like a "Rares List" and hard values and such. I know we'll never know the exact numbers, even though they exist. That being said, the reason I voted for the rarity overhaul and not against it, is because I knew it would make it easier to know more specifically how my pets are valued. It would make the fluidity part of trading easier, because pets are now grouped into more rarities than ever before.

I'd argue we need more categories on the rarer end than the common end. I think having a difference between EC and OMGSC is a little weird, they're both pretty worthless, and instead we could give another Rarity like Mega, Hyper, Rare or something between ER and OMGSR. I'd suggest 'Ultra' but that makes UR which is for Unreleased pets (though they're called Special Releases in the Archives, meaning that SRs could be the new name for them if we went with 'Ultra'). That being said, I could see how it'd be unsatisfying to not have an even number of rarities on each side of the spectrum. It might be weird to have 'Uncommon' not be the middle of the pack, and instead have 'Very Uncommon' be the middle of the pack.

The list the community comes up with doesn't have to be 100% accurate, it just needs to be majorly agreed upon, we can see that it clearly wasn't 100% accurate with the way that the now-old list has some OMGSRs lower down than other ERs and such. That being said, it's amazing how they could estimate the rarities like that and place pets so accurately outside of a few outliers. That's where the fluidity and demand and stuff come in. I'm not saying that a rares list should be absolute law, but I do think that something like it should exist for the valuation of older and rarer pets.

[Raire]

Poll Update!

Hey everyone! Here's where our running poll currently stands, thank you so much to everyone who voted!


After some great discussion on this thread, I'm going to update the poll with a narrowed-down set of options to see if we could put a finer point on where most players are learning towards. This will erase previous responses, so if you'd like to vote again, please do! I'll leave an option for those who feel strongly about any option that isn't retained or mentioned otherwise. ^^

I agree that, on a lot of levels, there are huge problems with things like a "Rares List" and hard values and such. I know we'll never know the exact numbers, even though they exist. That being said, the reason I voted for the rarity overhaul and not against it, is because I knew it would make it easier to know more specifically how my pets are valued. It would make the fluidity part of trading easier, because pets are now grouped into more rarities than ever before.

I'd argue we need more categories on the rarer end than the common end. I think having a difference between EC and OMGSC is a little weird, they're both pretty worthless, and instead we could give another Rarity like Mega, Hyper, Rare or something between ER and OMGSR. I'd suggest 'Ultra' but that makes UR which is for Unreleased pets (though they're called Special Releases in the Archives, meaning that SRs could be the new name for them if we went with 'Ultra'). That being said, I could see how it'd be unsatisfying to not have an even number of rarities on each side of the spectrum. It might be weird to have 'Uncommon' not be the middle of the pack, and instead have 'Very Uncommon' be the middle of the pack.

The list the community comes up with doesn't have to be 100% accurate, it just needs to be majorly agreed upon, we can see that it clearly wasn't 100% accurate with the way that the now-old list has some OMGSRs lower down than other ERs and such. That being said, it's amazing how they could estimate the rarities like that and place pets so accurately outside of a few outliers. That's where the fluidity and demand and stuff come in. I'm not saying that a rares list should be absolute law, but I do think that something like it should exist for the valuation of older and rarer pets.

all of this does make a lot of sense to me! I also agree that it's hard to say whether we should have just introduced additional rare categories and left the rest alone; in theory it seems like it would have balanced the trade economy more, but yeah on the other hand, would that have confused or skewed the system to not have a symmetrical division on both sides of the rarity spectrum? this stuff is so hard tbh. xD